By Rajiv Jhangiani
Well, we did it. Seventeen psychology faculty from six post-secondary institutions in British Columbia came together on July 18 & 19 and worked intensively for two days to create a testbank designed to accompany open textbooks for introductory psychology. As I have previously written about, the absence of ancillary materials (a testbank most of all) presents a significant challenge to instructors who wish to adopt an open textbook. Although some observers will turn their noses up at the thought of faculty not writing every single one of the questions on their exams, the reality is that many (overworked) instructors of large, multi-section survey courses do start working from the publisher-supplied textbook, writing, revising, and editing as necessary over time. The need for this crutch becomes even more pronounced for new faculty that do not have years of classroom and assessment experience to draw on, sessional faculty assigned to a course only weeks ahead of the first class meeting, and large sections with limited teaching assistant support. For those of us that advocate for the adoption of open educational resources in the classroom, ignoring or criticizing this reality is nothing more than self-righteous hubris. Worse still, for the pragmatically minded, it is a waste of time.
Fast forward to this May when, following a series of productive conversations with Mary Burgess (Director of Open Education at BC Campus) and Peter Lindberg (NOBA Project), I was able to secure the financial support of both organizations to coordinate a “testbank sprint.” Modelled on the efforts of textbook sprints that, for example, bring together a number of faculty members for a few days to write a textbook from scratch, the idea was to invite faculty from a number of psychology departments in BC to come together for two days for a retreat-style sprint.
At the best of times, writing questions is not enjoyable work, so I knew that in order to recruit enough participants and to create a productive environment the sprint would have to be interspersed with opportunities for socializing and rejuvenation. Another goal was to gather sprinters from a variety of institutions (the wider the representation, the more natural the sense of ownership and buy-in). Finally, the challenge of producing a resource like this for Introductory Psychology is the sheer number of topic areas (15) that need coverage. Thus we would have to find a way of collecting data about potential participants’ areas of expertise and mapping these onto the topic areas in order to ensure adequate coverage.
Read the complete post on Dr. Jhangiani’s Blog.
The Battle Stations | Image courtesy of Rajiv Jhangiani
Dr. Rajiv Jhangiani is a psychology professor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University and an adjunct professor and alumni of UBC’s Department of Psychology. More.
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