Thomas Holme, PhD, Interim Department Chair, Morrill Professor Iowa State University

The Department of Chemistry Presents:  Dr. Thomas Holme, Interim Department Chair, Morrill Professor, Iowa State University

The challenge of assessing student learning, particularly when the scale of the task is defined by large class sizes merits regular consideration in the planning and implementation of course work. One approach is exemplified by the style of testing supported in Chemistry by the ACS Exams Institute, where the measurement instrument is designed to leverage the quality of assessment information achievable due to psychometric (statistical) tools made possible by having many student performances in a given dataset. A key constraint of this approach arises when the material to be assessed explicitly values more complex concepts, including connections between chemistry and other areas of intellectual and educational interest.This talk will consider both aspects of assessment of student learning and make the case that increasing the number of tools available to educators, including both traditional and more recently innovated testing can provide a useful perspective towards making decisions about teaching and learning in the chemistry classroom.

BIO

Dr. Thomas Holme, joined the faculty in August 2008. He received his PhD. from Rice University in 1987 and was a Postdoctoral Associate at Hebrew University and the University of Pennsylvania from 1987 to 1989. He began his academic career at the University of South Dakota and comes to us from the University of Wisconsin — Milwaukee. He maintains two research groups, one in Chemical Education Research and the other in Computational Chemistry.