Cedarville University
School of Pharmacy
Analyzing Exam Effectiveness
Applications Used:
About
Cedarville University was founded in Southwest Ohio in 1887 and is known for its Baptist background, excellent academic programs, retention rates, and student satisfaction. Cedarville’s School of Pharmacy is focused on the needs of their patients and pursuing innovative and ethical ways of solving health problems.
The Challenge
The School of Pharmacy had been using eCurriculum and eValuate to map where and how the ACPE Appendices, School Goals, and course outcomes are covered throughout the curriculum. They wanted to take it one step further. In order to gauge students’ progress on each learning topic, they wanted to replace paper-based tests with an online testing system.
Their goal: to take the teaching and student self-assessment they were documenting through eCurriculum and eValuate full circle to see if students were grasping the topics and outcomes they had set out to teach and achieve.
With its old system, the program was unable to securely lock down the testing environment. It did not have a way of giving students a limited amount of time to review their individual exam answers before taking the exam with their team. Being able to manage and organize assessment items of all types, such as multiple choice, open ended, and performance based questions was also something the School of Pharmacy needed.
The Solution
AllofE worked closely with Becky Gryka, the Chair of Pharmaceutical Sciences, to define the goals and outcomes desired by the program. By working together, AllofE was able to provide the School of Pharmacy with a system that allowed them to work, teach, and test more efficiently. AllofE built the program a new team testing module with reports that are only accessible through the secure lockdown browser.
The Effect
With this system the program instructors are able to give the students in-depth exam reviews to help them fully master the topics and outcomes they may have missed previously. It also allows the instructors to assign extra credit to correctly answered difficult questions, while not affecting the scores of those who answered incorrectly. ExamN assists the program in being more efficient in saving time by automatically grading multiple choice and short answer questions and providing detailed item analyses, reliability analyses, score correlations, and competency based reporting dashboards. The School of Pharmacy can give full and partial remediation based on each student’s performance with ExamN as well.
Moving Forward
With eCurriculum, eValuate, and ExamN, Cedarville University is able to see performance on outcomes across courses and on ACPE topics from the beginning of the program until the end, giving them the ultimate student and patient satisfaction that they desired.