Happy Women’s History Month! For those of us in North America, spring is just around the corner. In this newsletter, I’ve included the following important updates about ChemQuiz.net:
- *NEW* accommodations & modifications settings!
- Webinar about accommodations & modifications feature and more on Tuesday, March 24th at 7pm ET/4pm PT
- *NEW* pop-outs for Question Banks
- Bug fixes and other improvements
- Site licenses for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard
- “Women in Chemistry” classroom resource for Women’s History Month
*NEW* accommodations & modifications settings!
When I added the Quiz Timer feature last month, I started working on adding a feature that would allow teachers to modify timer settings for specific students based on their IEP or 504 Plans. Providing extra time on assessments has been a very common accommodation in my teaching experience.
This got me thinking about some of the other accommodations and modifications I’ve provided to students over my career, so I’ve added the following new settings that you can individually apply to your students:
- Diagram color: Display diagrams and pictures in grayscale (no color)
- Font size: Normal, large, and extra large
- Given values: All given values are simplified (rounded to 1 sig fig)
- Multiple choice override: Replace fill-in-the-blank questions with multiple choice
- Multiple choice options: Reduce the number of multiple choice options
- Timer: Multiply the quiz timer length by 1.5Ă—, 2Ă—, 2.5Ă—, or 3Ă—, or disable it
Here’s how you can activate accommodations and modifications for your students:
- In the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard, click on Students in the top menu
- Click on the “edit” link for the student you’d like to update
- Scroll down to the new “Accommodations & Modifications” section:
- Select the accommodations and modifications that you’d like to apply to this student
- Click the pink “Update This Student” button at the bottom of the form
You can also set accommodations and modifications when you manually create a new student account.
I hope these new settings make it easier to meet your students’ individual needs! If you encounter any issues while using the new accommodations and modifications, or if you have any suggestions for additional settings you’d like to see, please let me know!
Webinar Tuesday, March 24th @ 7pm ET/4pm PT
The next live webinar will take place on Tuesday, March 24th at 7pm Eastern Time/4pm Pacific Time on Zoom! This time, I’m going to focus on how to use the new accommodations & modifications feature. There will also be time for a Q&A session at the end.
Please use this link to register for the webinar in advance:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/PY2B3cIwSQOJBm7VHvtT1g
After registering, you should receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. If you have any topics you’d like me to add or any questions you’d like to submit in advance, please submit them using the Contact form or you can email me at chris@chemquiz.net.
I’ll also be sending out a “Certificate of Attendance” for one contact hour for everyone who attends so that you can use it for your teaching license renewal (or however your state does it). I’m looking forward to seeing you there!
*NEW* pop-outs for Question Banks assignments!
Yesterday, out of the blue, I realized that I’d never made the pop-out calculator, periodic table, and electronegativities table available for Question Banks assignments. Oops! Now, when you create or edit a Question Banks assignment, you’ll see these new settings at the bottom:
Considering how many Question Banks assignments that have been created since I introduced that feature, I’m honestly surprised that no one pointed out this oversight before now. I hope this helps make Question Banks assignments more useful!
Bug fixes & other improvements
In addition to the new features listed above, I also added more new features and fixed the following bugs on ChemQuiz.net:
Dashboard – these also apply to PhysQuiz.net!
- new feature: added accommodation setting for timers (1.5Ă—, 2Ă—, 2.5Ă—, 3Ă—, and no timer)
- new feature: added modification setting for reducing the number of multiple choice options
- new feature: added modification setting for replacing any fill-in-the-blank questions with multiple choice
- new feature: added modification setting to change all graphs and diagrams to grayscale
- new feature: added modification setting to generate “Simplified” values rounded to 1 sig fig
- enhancement: updated redox exemplars
- enhancement: added Beer-Lambert Law exemplars
- bug fix: student names & IDs weren’t being included in results csv export (thanks, Martin & Elizabeth!)
- bug fix: exemplar submenus (“General” & “AP Chemistry”) were missing due to a mistake in the new menu design
Question Banks – these also apply to PhysQuiz.net!
- new feature: added options to display the pop-out calculator, periodic table, and electronegativities table in Question Banks assignments
- enhancement: added new Community Banks about polyatomic ions and SI units (thanks, Dorothy!)
Most Quizzes – these also apply to PhysQuiz.net!
- enhancement: improved generation of multiple choice distractors to better avoid duplicate options due to rounding
- bug fix: elemental symbol for xenon was not being displayed on the pop-out periodic table or electronegativities table
- bug fix: “Simplified” option for given values wasn’t working
Concentrations & Colligative Properties of Solutions Quiz
- bug fix: given temperature values were missing descriptions in freezing point depression problems (thanks, Antonia!)
- bug fix: test code was being displayed on the questions page 🤦🏻‍♂️ (thanks, Matthew E.!)
Molecular Geometry & VSEPR Quiz
- new feature: added electronegativities pop-out table to quiz options (thanks, Zack!)
- enhancement: disabled diatomic molecules because they were confusing too many people (thanks, Keith!)
Naming Compounds & Calculating Molar Masses Quiz
- enhancement: added 41 binary molecular compounds
- correction: compound name for LiOH•2H2O was incorrect (thanks, Stephen!)
- correction: improved naming explanation for HClO4•H2O (perchloric acid monohydrate) (thanks again, Stephen!)
- bug fix: beryllium nitrate wasn’t marked as having a polyatomic ion in the database (thanks, Nick!)
- enhancement: improved rounding of correct answers and multiple choice options
- bug fix: correct answer for pH or pOH was being rounded to one sig fig when the value was less than 0.1 (thanks, Matthew W.!)
- bug fix: for correct answers < 1, the first multiple choice option was always the correct one
Redox Reactions & Net Ionic Equations Quiz
- enhancement: added new problem types for “oxidized/reduced” and “oxidizing agent/reducing agent” (thanks, Jess!)
- enhancement: added oxidation numbers for 21 molecular compounds
- bug fix: quiz was using unrounded Ksp values from the database instead of rounded values displayed to students to calculate correct answers (thanks, Susan!)
Thanks to everyone who has reported a bug or sent in a suggestion! Your feedback helps me fix problems and improve the site, so if you come across any issues or errors while using ChemQuiz.net, please fill out this short Contact form and I’ll do my best to get it fixed as fast as I can.
* Advanced options are only available to teachers with an active site license for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard
Site licenses for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard
Thanks to everyone who has purchased or renewed a site license for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard! Site licenses are how I pay for web hosting and security software, and for the software I use to write the quizzes. It also keeps the website ad-free and supports me so I can keep improving the site and adding new quizzes and features.
An active site license for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard allows you to:
- create assignments for your students using the quizzes on the site
- select the options you want that best match your students’ needs, including advanced options such as requiring correct sig figs in answers
- allow your students to save their progress as they’re working on an assignment
- build exams from multiple assignments
- create custom question banks and flashcards with your own questions and images or use questions shared by the ChemQuiz.net educator community
- use the “tab switch detection” anti-cheating feature
- review results with your students so they can correct misconceptions and grasp concepts more quickly
- track your students’ progress and download results for data analysis
- create custom rubrics to score assignments
- create timed assignments to help students prepare for state and AP® tests
- choose from hundreds of “exemplar” assignments that are ready to use in your classes, including over 120 exemplars aligned to AP® Chemistry Learning Objectives
- *NEW* provide accommodations and modifications on assignments for students with special needs
If you’d like to purchase a 12-month site license for just US$99, you can do so in any of the following ways:
- credit card through Square (the most popular option)
- school purchase order (contact me for a sales quote!)
- CashApp, PayPal, or Venmo at chris@chemquiz.net or @ChemQuizDotNet
Additional schools in the same district can purchase an add-on license for 50% off at just US$49 per school.
If your school offers physics, you can also bundle a site license for the PhysQuiz.net Dashboard for just US$49 more!
Site licenses also make it possible for me to make the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard free for the 229 U.S. public schools whose students are economically disadvantaged. If you teach in a high poverty public school in the United States (at least 50% of your students are on free/reduced lunch or designated “economically disadvantaged”), just send me a link to the supporting documentation and you’ll get a free site license for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard forever – PhysQuiz.net, too!
Help me share ChemQuiz.net with the world!
If you like using ChemQuiz.net, there are three quick and easy things that you can do to help me promote the site!
- Add your school to the long list of supporters on the About ChemQuiz.net page! Simply go to the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard, click on “Your Info” in the top menu bar, activate the box next to “Display School on ChemQuiz.net“, and click the “Update Your Info” button.
- Tell another Chemistry teacher about ChemQuiz.net and encourage them to try out the Dashboard!
- Follow @ChemQuizDotNet on BlueSky 🦋 and share my updates with your fellow Chemistry teachers!
Classroom resource for Women’s History Month
Last year, I shared this amazing free resource called “Diversity in Chemistry” that was created by Dr. Kate Ries of Metro State University. The site features pages and pages of chemists of different backgrounds organized by discipline, and many of the chemists were included in PowerPoint and Google Slides presentations that she created.
This year, I wanted to make a hallway display for Women’s History Month in the school where I teach, so I combined Dr. Ries’s excellent slides into one slide deck, trimmed out the guys, and made some minor cosmetic changes. The result is this “Women in Chemistry” slide deck that features 83 chemists from the past and present that you can use for your own classrooms! Here’s an example slide:
I printed them out on our library’s color laser printer (thanks, Jen!) so that each page had four slides that I could cut out, and I’m going to try to arrange them in the shape of the periodic table when I hang them up outside our chemistry classrooms on Monday. I’m hoping it will inspire some of our girls to become scientists too!
Thank you for your continued support of ChemQuiz.net! Please feel free to contact me at any time by using the Contact form or emailing me at chris@chemquiz.net if you ever have any questions, comments, or concerns. Hang in there – Spring Break is just around the corner!
-Chris