The process of evaluating student learning and performance lies at the core of teaching in K-12 grades and also at the college and university levels. However, paper and pencil exams offer neither an interactive or authentic contextualized format. Testing should ideally he an integral part of learning. We propose to use advances in multimedia software to develop for the first time truly interactive evaluations that will permit us to better assess learning and improve teaching. The content of each assignment, quiz, or exam can draw from the full range of materials from lecture, the readings, and laboratories, and can incorporate the most recent discoveries in the sciences, thus blurring the distinction between teaching and research. Short answer and interactive problem-solving questions will be integrated with text, 2-D images, video clips, sound, and 3-D animations. Exam templates will be produced so that the instructor can "copy, cut, and paste" their materials into the format to produce their exams. The program will be designed to randomly select questions that are sorted by content as well as level of difficulty so that each student receives a "unique but uniform" exam. A review program will rerun the exercise for the student and display the question along with the student's response, the correct response, and a justification for the correct response. Grades will be automatically calculated and reported as the last screen of the exam for immediate feedback to the student. This proposal will build applications in five different science disciplines at the middle school, high school, and university level. Our effort will impact large numbers of students in the large undergraduate science courses at the University of Texas, and a significant proportion of these are women and ethnic minorities. The program and the templates will also be useful in most other disciplines, and the publication of these templates at the completion of the project will make our results readily available to oth er instructors. It is anticipated that computer-based multimedia examinations will soon become the standard for evaluating student learning and performance.
