How to have a web search paper in a large lecture course…..Lessons Learned

 

  1. Have students submit the paper on line. This saved a lot of faculty time dealing with “I turned my paper in (under your door, to the secretary, to the other professor, etc) but I don’t have a grade”.  Online it is either there or not and you can block people turning in late as desired.
  2. When writing self-grading short answer questions, keep the desired answer short and be specific that it must be typed EXACTLY as desired.  (For example, students who don’t put spaces between words or spell something wrong would be graded incorrectly.  Try to think of every acceptable answer when programming the key.  If the answer is “under 3 months” you might want to program “underthreemonths”,  “<3 months” and “less than three months” as alternative correct answers.  (This is where it pays to give good directions and keep desired answer short.)  It is possible and not too hard to go back and add additional correct answers after the test is done, just takes time to do.
  3. Always have alternative questions to decrease cheating.  When the questions look similar but have different answers it helps potential cheaters learn the risks of getting answers form friends who have already competed the paper.
  4. For drug pricing, use multiple choice.  The formulas for WebCT to put in a range of prices were laborious.
  5. Encourage students to access information efficiently.
    1. Search the entire web (we have not had Google searches be part of this paper to date)
    2. Know key sites for getting pharm info (see reference page www.hhs.csus.edu/pharm).  DO NOT put an active link into the quiz/paper.  Life long learning skills:  Students need to be able to find the page when they don’t have the quiz/paper open.
    3. “Find on this page” to jump down document instead of reading the whole thing.
    4. Be comfortable with having 2 browsers open at the same time.  One to run WebCT quiz, the other to look the answers up.  This will really help on the open internet final.
  1. Writing competency (manual grading).  Compare and contrast 2 drugs.  Despite the large class size, it wasn’t too bad grading these 3-5 sentence essays, and it was a very good exercise for students.   In  pharmacology spelling has to count.  Drug errors can result from bad spelling.
  2. When deducting points during manual grading, type a comment in under the question so student can see why.
  3. Date the title of the question so old questions can be thinned out.
  4. Write questions that require specific info off a web page (Like what drug did the FDA pull off the market in August 2004 because of reports of fulminant hepatitis?) close to when paper will open so web page will hopefully not have changed.
  5. Between 2 papers, include:
    1. Compare and contrast (hand grade, have on each paper?)
    2. Find an abstract (hand grade)
    3. Find an abstract to support a non FDA approved indication for a drug (hand grade or fill in, not currently on tests)
    4. Cost of drug (multiple choice)
    5. Drug interactions (multiple choice)
    6. Immunization schedule (fill in)
    7. Most commonly prescribed (fill in from rxlist’s top 200)
    8. FDA (search site, fill in or MC)
    9. Herbal fact sheet (fill in, find on this page)
    10. Drug abuse (fill in, find on this page)
    11. Fuzzy search for a misspelled drug or when you cannot read handwriting (fill in, not currently on tests)
    12. Google search when an unapproved abbreviation used (MSO4, MgSO4, MS or MOM? Not currently on paper)