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The appropriate analysis of students' responses to an assessment is an essential step in improving the quality of the assessment itself as well as staff teaching and student learning. Many academics are unfamiliar with the formal processes used to analyze assessment results; the standard statistical methods associated with analyzing the validity and reliability of an assessment are perceived as being too difficult for academics with a limited understanding of statistics. This inability of academics to apply conventional statistical tools with authority often makes it difficult for them to make informed judgements about improving the quality of the questions used in assessments. We analyzed students' answers to a number of selected response assessments and examined different formats for presenting the resulting data to academics from a range of disciplines. We propose the need for a set of simple but effective visual formats that will allow academics to identify questions that should be reviewed before being used again and present the results of a staff survey which evaluated the response of academics to these presentation formats. The survey examined ways in which academics might use the data to assist their teaching and students' learning. We propose that by engaging academics with a formal reflection of students' responses, academic developers are in a position to influence academics' use of specific items for diagnostic and formative assessments.

Student experience surveys have become increasingly popular to probe various aspects of processes and outcomes in higher education, such as measuring student perceptions of the learning environment and identifying aspects that could be improved. This paper reports on a particular survey for evaluating individual experiments that has been developed over some 15 years as part of a large national Australian study pertaining to the area of undergraduate laboratories--Advancing Science by Enhancing Learning in the Laboratory. This paper reports on the development of the survey instrument and the evaluation of the survey using student responses to experiments from different institutions in Australia, New Zealand and the USA. A total of 3153 student responses have been analysed using factor analysis. Three factors, "motivation," "assessment" and "resources," have been identified as contributing to improved student attitudes to laboratory activities. A central focus of the survey is to provide feedback to practitioners to iteratively improve experiments. Implications for practitioners and researchers are also discussed.

The requirement to provide timely formative tasks that are designed to facilitate student learning and autonomy has provoked a wider examination of the role of assessment in higher education and encouraged further investigation of the alignment of learning, teaching and assessment in curriculum design frameworks. Many current authors have proposed that the primary purpose of assessment is to enhance current and future learning and that current practice tends to overemphasise the importance of assessment for progression and certification purposes. This paper proposes that a clearer distinction be made between assessment tasks designed to facilitate and test current learning through the use of formative and summative assessments, and those tasks primarily designed to enhance future learning, which could be better termed integrative assessments. This distinction would allow students and teachers to have greater clarity around the proposed outcomes and reward mechanisms associated with assessment tasks and feedback. This paper proposes that teachers should strive to incorporate four different types of assessment tasks throughout a programme of study, namely diagnostic, formative, integrative and summative tasks, and that the outcomes and reward mechanisms for different assessment types be explained more clearly to students. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)

Bis(oligophenyleneethynylenes) is prepared as representative members of a new class of potential nonlinear optical materials and its optical properties are examined for the evidence of restricted rotation of the aryl rings when compared to their single-strand precursors. The effect of altering the electron density of the terminating functional group of these compounds on their properties is investigated.

Several 1,3-dienes with an attached stereogenic center were reacted wth maleic anhydride under different conditions to determine how the size of the allylic amino group and the homoallylic hydroxyl protecting moiety influences the pi-facial selectivity of their Diels-Alder reactions. The results indicated an increase in pi-facial bias when the reaction was performed in LiClO4/ether solution or when a larger protecting group was used for the homoallylic hydroxyl function.

An analysis of Pd-catalyzed coupling of terminal alkynes to 5-alkynyluridine and 2'-deoxyuridine derivatives validates the theory that 5-alkynyl containing pyrimidine nucleosides have anticancer and antiviral properties. Crosscoupling terminal alkynes with acetylated uridine triplate yields the desired coupled product. Reaction temperature increases improve coupling rates. Pd-catalyzed disilylation of (trimethylsilyl)alkynes yields the respective arylalkynes.

Students of chemistry can learn from using an environmental chemistry experiment involving separation of polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) through use of 2-dimensional thin-layer chromatography 2-D TLC. Students seldom have the opportunity to use 2-D TLC, but it has been used effectively in a second-year environmental chemistry course in Australia. Students in groups deal with an unknown soil sample with two PAHs in it. They simultaneously run the chromatogram of a standard mixture of four PAHs and compare.