Exam Development Update

Happy March everyone! I hope your semester is going well so far. 

The Exam Development Team would like to update you on the progress of the current exam development projects in CEFL. Thanks to the many instructors who have worked hard on exam development projects! Your knowledge and expertise has allowed us to create valid and reliable exams for a number of courses. Thank you to Karlie Wimble and Karim Jaber for the ongoing and invaluable work they have done on creating answer sheets, converting and distributing exams, and revising answer keys. Thank you also to our coordinator Carey Hilgartner for his ongoing support and guidance.

Current Exam Development projects:

Science 14 Final and Unit Exam Review

-nearly complete Form B for the final

-Final Exam Form A has been used since August and we are continuing to collect data using Form Return answer sheets. This exam has proven to be valid and reliable.

-Unit exams 1 and 2 complete with Form Return answer sheets. We are working on Units C and D

Science 14 Exam Review Collaborators:

Lindsay Bonenfant, Danielle Dore, Karen Harris, Julie Hill, Penny Marcotte, Alix Macdonald, Neil Summers

English Language Arts 30-2 Equivalency Exam Review

-final stages of Form B revisions and review

-Form A has been in use since August. We are collecting data using Form Return answer sheets. Form A has proven to be valid and reliable.

ELA 30-2 Equivalency Exam Review Collaborators:

Meghan Clayton, Susan Lemmer, Lorna Malanik, Tasha Nott, Patricia Pryce,  Murray Ronaghan, Jennefer Rousseau, Chris Taylor

English Language Arts 20-1 Unit Exam Review

-The review process is under way and items for four unit exams are coming together.

-At the end of this project, we will have 4 common unit exams for ELA 20-1 (poetry, non-fiction, Shakespeare, and short story).

ELA 20-1 Unit Exam Review Collaborators:

 Meghan Clayton, Marc Desilets, Danielle Dore, Tasha Nott, Murray Ronaghan, Jennefer Rousseau, Duff Waddell

Bio 30 and Bio 20 Unit Exam Review

-Units 1 and 2 have been reviewed, revised, and the new forms blueprinted. We are using Form Return to track data for these exams

-Units 3 and 4 are coming along with item review and revision, as well as item writing.

Bio 20/30 Unit Exam Review Collaborators:

Lindsay Bonenfant, Michelle Bourne, Celia Herodek, Penny Marcotte, Lee Murray, Laura Slade

Common Unit and Final Exams

-We are making our way through the exam conversion process.

-thanks to Karlie's excellent workshop on how to convert exams, we have had more staff participating in the conversion project (you can view the video on the Foundational Curriculum website)

Exam Conversion Team:

Danielle Dore, Penny Marcotte, Karlie Wimble

Math 30-1 Form B Unit Exams

-Thanks to Debbie Scott for taking on the initiative to write Form B unit exams for MAT3791

-These exams have been reviewed and blueprinted and are currently being used. The exams also have Form Return answer sheets.

Exam Reviewers:

Debbie Scott, Michael Gaschnitz, Bev Kosior, Melanie Macdonald, Brenda Thomas

There has also been some Exam Development Centre work taking place that is not necessarily a project, but is still valuable work to the CEFL. Work is currently being done on Science 10 unit and final exams (Neil Summers, Penny Marcotte, Karim Jaber), and Chemistry 20 unit exams (Debbie Scott, Lindsay Bonenfant, Penny Marcotte), and Math 30-3 exam and assignment development thanks to Brenda Thomas and Bev Kosior.

Thank you again to all instructors who have graciously given their time and expertise to exam development projects! It’s a pleasure to work with all of you!

If you would like to be involved in an exam development project please contact Maureen Stewart (3410, mstewart@bowvalleycollege.ca). If you would like to submit an exam development project idea, please visit the Foundational Curriculum website and click on Submit a Project Idea.

If you spot an error in an exam, please fill out the Report and Error Form on the Foundational Curriculum website. We will respond within one business day. Many thanks to those already using the form including Brenda Thomas, Penny Marcotte, Neil Summers, Debbie Scott, Michelle Bourne, Celia Herodek, Laura Slade, and Lindsay Bonenfant.

We look forward to working with you!

Maureen Stewart
Curriculum Development Exam Lead

ELA 20-1 Unit Exam Review

Jennefer, Danielle, and Duff discuss the poetry exam.

The Curriculum Development Exam Centre and English Language Arts instructors are working together to review and revise the ELA 20-1 Unit Exams. Jennefer Rousseau approached the Curriculum Coordinator, Carey Hilgartner about collaborating with all ELA instructors on creating new exams for ELA 20-1, and the review project was born! Thanks to Jennefer for bringing this project forward, and to Carey for his support in moving forward.

Our project team is:

Meghan Clayton

Marc Desilets

Danielle Dore

Tasha Nott

Murray Ronaghan

Jennefer Rousseau

Duff Waddell


The group is reviewing and classifying items and adding existing items to the new English Language Arts Unit Exam Blueprint. At the end of the review, the ELA 20-1 students in the Centre will write common unit exams for four of the five units. The novel unit is left to the discretion of the instructor. 

Marc & Meghan collaborating

The process has been going very well so far with weekly check-in meetings and instructors collaborating together during the day. Project team members have been busy reviewing and revising items, as well as searching for and selecting new readings that are appropriate for 20-1. The new exams will also include readings with Aboriginal content, something that was lacking in the previous exams. Our thanks to Danielle Dore for taking the lead on finding readings that contain Aboriginal content and/or have Aboriginal authors. The new unit exams will also have Form Return answer sheets in order to collect data and statistics on the exams, and the Form Return answer sheets will be machine scored.

We are very excited about the new exams in ELA 20-1 and we will continue to share our progress with you. If you have any questions about this or other Exam Development projects, please contact the Curriculum Coordinator Carey Hilgartner, or Maureen Stewart Exam Development Lead. Please see the Foundational Curriculum website for more information on all the Curriculum Development projects and centre work. 

Thanks very much to Carey and the project team for your hard work on this! 

The 20-1 Project Group (missing Tasha Nott)

English 30-2 Equivalency Exam Review

The English 30-2 Equivalency Exam Review team is back in action!

A big thank you to the all-star English Equivalency Exam Review team who met last week to discuss next steps in the project! Meghan Clayton, Susan Lemmer, Lorna Malanik, Tasha Nott, Patricia Pryce, Murray Ronaghan, Jennefer Rousseau, and Chris Taylor will be busy working on Form B for the next several weeks.
Three new readings were added to the exam to replace those removed at the retreat in March. The team has broken into smaller groups to work on writing items for specific readings and they will work to fill gaps in the blueprint. At the end of November, the Equivalency Exam group will attend a retreat to work collaboratively on completing Form B.

Stayed tuned for updates, and see the Foundational Curriculum website for more information.

English Equivalency Exam Review Update

Happy Fall Term Everyone!

With the new term comes opportunity to continue work on the English Equivalency Exam Review Project. In the summer, the English Equivalency Exam project team worked with the curriculum team to complete Form A of the English 30-2 Equivalency Exam. The project had been ongoing since January of this year with a lot of hard work being done by some very dedicated and talented instructors. Thanks so much for all your work!

Thank you to Meghan Clayon, Lorna Houck, Susan Lemmer, Jennefer Rousseau, Patricia Pryce, Murray Ronaghan Tasha Nott, Chris Taylor, and Allen Bobie for their work on reviewing and revising the exam. We had a retreat in March to give us the opportunity to work together and determine which readings and items would remain on the exam. During the summer months, Meghan Clayon, Lorna Houck, Susan Lemmer, Jennefer Rousseau, and Patricia Pryce worked to create items to fill gaps in the blueprint for Form A. The collaboration in the short time frame was inspiring! Once the items were written, the exam was reviewed as a whole by the group and the new Form A Version 202 was born. We are collecting statistics on the exam and its items to ensure reliability. We will share data once a large enough sample size is collected. As with all exam review projects, exam maintenance is ongoing and we will continue to modify the exam where necessary. 

Now we move to writing items for Form B to replace eliminated items and to create items for new readings. The exam will be reviewed by all project team members, and the instructional designers will create a blueprint to ensure the exam is valid. Our targeted completion for Form B is December. As we have components in place such as English exam blueprints, templates, item writing guidelines, and the Foundational Curriculum website, the English Language Arts exam development can be even more rapid and collaborative. 

Thank you to everyone who worked on and supported the English Equivalency Exam Review! We are happy to have everyone contribute to projects. Please email Maureen or Carey with any questions or concerns. You can also submit a project idea on the Exam Development Project page. 

Science 14 Final Review Project

The Curriculum Development Team is very pleased to update you on the progress of the Science 14 Final Exam Review. The Science 14 project review team has completed the Form A of the final exam for Science 14. The exam was developed in collaboration with faculty from across the department program offerings including TRAD, ATOL, Aboriginal, and Flex. The exam has so far proven to be valid and reliable as students performed as expected when it was written on August 21 this term. 

Thank you very much to Exam Reviewers Penny Marcotte, Lee Murray, Julie Hill, Angelica McDonald, Alix MacDonald, Danielle Dore, Lynda Newton, Neil Summers, Lindsay Bonenfant, and Jennifer Chang. A very big thank you to Penny Marcotte and Neil Summers for item writing and blueprinting the exam. Thank you also to Jenny Tzanakos for creating images for items in the exam. It looks fantastic and it reflects the Science 14 curriculum extremely well. Penny and Neil took great care in attending to official curriculum when creating items and the blueprint. Thank you for your diligence (and persistence J).

As part of all exam reviews, we will continue with the maintenance phase on Form A, and we will review statistics on the exam after it is written by a large enough student pool. We will continue work on Form B in the fall semester. Angelica has already converted the exam to the new format, and so we will continue with the item writing of Form B for completion in the fall term. 

This was a great group to work with and I thank everyone for their contributions! I'm looking forward to working with you again on Form B.