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March 2024 newsletter: molecular Lewis structures, polyatomic ions and more!

Hello again, I hope you’ve been doing well! In this newsletter, I’ve included the following important updates about ChemQuiz.net:

  • *NEW* Molecular Lewis structures!
  • *NEW* Polyatomic ion naming & formula writing!
  • Bug fixes and other improvements

*NEW* Molecular Lewis structures!

Now that ChemQuiz.net has been around for almost four years, I feel like I’ve been able to add many of the fundamental quiz and Dashboard features that would be most useful to a high school or introductory college Chemistry course. However, there are still a number of topics that I want to add to the site, and molecular Lewis structures have been at the top of that list for a while now.

After I finished adding multiple choice options to all of the quizzes back in January, I’ve spent the last several weeks collecting and verifying 227 molecular Lewis structures so I could add them to the Lewis Dot Structures Quiz! Here’s an example of one type of question generated by the quiz:I also added the ability to select molecules that either follow the octet rule or don’t follow it (or both!). Here’s an example of a more challenging question about an octet rule-breaker:

I did my best to avoid resonance structures (for now) and I tested out all of the questions, but if you come across any incorrect structures, bugs or other issues, please let me know. I hope the new molecular Lewis structures are useful for you and your students!


*NEW* Polyatomic ion naming & formula writing

Another popular feature request has been to ask me to add a quiz to help students memorize polyatomic ions, but I never felt that topic was significant enough to justify its own separate quiz. However, I recently realized that I had already entered most of the widely known polyatomic ions in the database for a different quiz, so I added them to the Naming Compounds & Calculating Molar Masses Quiz! Here’s an example of the kinds of questions you can now generate:

There are a total of 37 polyatomic ions available, and the quiz should also accept common (non-IUPAC) names as correct (e.g. “bicarbonate ion” will work just as well as “hydrogen carbonate ion”). You can also generate problems for calculating their molar masses.

Thanks to Michelle, Seth & Auburn for giving me this idea! Suggestions like theirs have helped me significantly improve ChemQuiz.net since it first launched in 2020, so please keep sending in your feedback and ideas!


Bug fixes & other improvements

As I’ve said in previous newsletters, I keep track of all the suggestions and bug reports that are sent in, and I try to prioritize bug fixes over adding new features, but sometimes it takes me a while to figure out what’s causing a problem or even how to reproduce it so I can track it down. A few of the bugs listed below were very challenging to resolve, so I just wanted to make sure everyone knew how much I appreciate their help and patience! Here’s a list of all the updates since the last newsletter:

Dashboard – these features and bug fixes also apply to PhysQuiz.net

  • new feature: added an expiring progress alert for students at the top of the Dashboard
  • bug fix: assignments for “All Classes” weren’t showing up on the Assignments page for colleagues (thanks, Bill!)
  • bug fix: overriding a student answer that was marked as “incorrect” would sometimes count for multiple points (thanks, Jason!)
  • bug fix: PHP notices were showing up in the production version of the Dashboard (thanks again, Jason!)

Exams

  • bug fix: an exam section would be inaccessible to students if they previously completed the assignment that section was based on and “Allow multiple attempts” was turned off (thanks, Cynthia!)

All Quizzes

  • improvement: tweaked the design of answer pages on all quizzes so they have similar column widths
  • bug fix: students were sometimes being prompted to finish an assignment for “All Classes” that was from a different teacher at their school (thanks, Lauren and Maggie!)

Acid-Base Equilibrium Quiz

  • bug fix: the correct answer for [H+] problems was incorrectly calculated as 1.00 for multiple choice questions, resulting in no correct options (thanks, Susan!)
  • bug fix: sometimes the correct multiple choice option for the dissociation constant value was marked as incorrect due to rounding

Balancing, Identifying & Predicting Chemical Equations Quiz

  • bug fix: diatomic gases were being truncated in multiple choice options for prediction questions (thanks, Matthew!)

Chemical Equilibrium Quiz

  • new feature: added “Avoid converting between Kc and Kc when calculating equilibrium constants” option (thanks, Lan!)
  • bug fix: solution setups for problems requiring conversion between Kp and Kc were missing some steps (thanks again, Lan!)

Kinetics & Rate Laws Quiz

  • bug fix: incorrect values were being used in solution setups for rate law problems with data tables (thanks, Mary Ann!)

Lewis Dot Structures Quiz

  • new feature: added Lewis structures for 227 molecules and polyatomic ions (thanks, Mike and Mags!)

Naming Compounds & Calculating Molar Masses Quiz

  • new feature: added an option to select polyatomic ions (thanks, Michelle, Seth & Auburn!)
  • bug fix: choosing ionic compounds with common polyatomic ions excluded fixed-charge nonmetals like chlorine (thanks, Drew!)
  • bug fix: answers for alternate names without a space between the positive ion and parentheses were erroneously being marked as incorrect

Other improvements

  • improvement: tweaked site security settings so that a school is less likely to be accidentally blocked by the firewall (thanks, Debbie!)

Please keep submitting your bug reports and suggestions! ChemQuiz.net has improved significantly over the past three and a half years thanks to all the teachers and students who have gotten in touch with me, so thank you all again for your support.


Site licenses for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard

Site licenses for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard allow teachers to create assignments for their students and track their progress. Thanks to the many schools, colleges, universities and tutors who have renewed or purchased a site license for this school year! Site licenses are how I pay for web hosting and site security as well as the software I use to write and maintain the quizzes, and it keeps the website ad-free.

If you’d like to purchase a 12-month ChemQuiz.net site license or renew your existing license, you can pay in one of the following ways:

    • credit card through Square (the most popular option)
    • school purchase order (contact me for a sales quote – I’m also happy to fill out any paperwork required by your institution or state, and I’ve already completed student privacy paperwork for states such as CA, IL, WI, and the six state MA-ME-NH-NY-RI-VT Student Data Privacy Consortium)

Additional schools in the same district can purchase an add-on license for 50% off at just US$35 per school. If you also teach physics or you have a colleague who does, you can bundle a site license for the PhysQuiz.net Dashboard for just US$35 more! Please contact me if you have any questions about how to purchase a site license.

Finally, if you teach in a high poverty public school or district (at least 50% of your students on free/reduced lunch or designated “economically disadvantaged”), please 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!). I want ChemQuiz.net to continue to be a useful resource for as many students as possible.


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 list of supporters on the About 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 X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and Threads and share my updates with your fellow Chemistry teachers!

I’m not sure how many of you are in the path of the Great American Eclipse next month on April 8th, but it’s passing through my town (Kent, Ohio) and I’m super excited about it! When the partial solar eclipse happened back in 2017, our district bought eclipse glasses for all of the students and staff, and then we took all the 6-12th graders out to the football stadium to watch it happen (I was also the MC for the event – I wrote a script and everything 😂). Those 6th graders from 2017 are now seniors, so it’s pretty cool that they’ll be able to experience two solar eclipses in such a short span of time!

However, because this will be a total solar eclipse, we’ve been warned by local authorities to start stocking up on food, water, fuel and batteries at least a week before the event because we’re going to be overrun with “eclipse tourists”! Hotels in the area have sold out, school districts in the counties along the path have already canceled for that day, and we’ve been told to expect 6-8 hour delays on roads and highways. 😱 That’s all very concerning, but I’m most worried about the Spring weather in northeast Ohio, which is often overcast and can be very mercurial. I don’t want to have to wait until 2044 to see the next one!

As always, thank you for your continued support of ChemQuiz.net! I hope that the school year has gone well for you so far and that you’re able to take a restful and relaxing break soon. Please feel free to reach out to me via the Contact form or at chris@chemquiz.net if you have any questions, suggestions or concerns. Take care!

-Chris

Categories
News

February 2024 newsletter: multiple choice for all quizzes, Dashboard improvements and more!

Hello, everybody! The last two newsletters were pretty long, so I’m going to try to keep this one more to the point. In this newsletter, I’ve included the following important updates about ChemQuiz.net:

  • *NEW* Multiple choice questions on all quizzes!
  • New Dashboard Results ease-of-use features
  • Lots of bug fixes and other improvements

*NEW* Multiple choice questions on all quizzes!

At long last, I’ve added multiple choice questions to all of the quizzes on ChemQuiz.net! Some of the quizzes already had multiple choice, but I’ve always wanted to add this feature to every quiz because I feel it lowers the barrier to learning just a bit, especially when students are just starting out on a topic and aren’t sure what a correct answer might look like.

To generate multiple choice questions on any quiz, simply select the “Multiple Choice” option when you generate a quiz or create an assignment:

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few weeks testing out multiple choice questions on all of the quizzes, but like all new features, I recommend trying it out with a test account or a small group of your students first. If you come across any bugs or poor quality options, please let me know if you find any. I hope the new multiple choice feature is useful for you and your students!


New Dashboard results ease-of-use features

One of my big goals for ChemQuiz.net was to make life easier for my fellow Chemistry teachers by automating generation and grading of assignments. While the Dashboard has definitely helped with collecting scores from automatically graded assignments, the Results page has always been a little clunky and cumbersome to use. This sort of thing drives me nuts when I use other LMS’s, so I made some efficiency improvements to the Dashboard.

First, there were some serious issues with how the filter menus looked, so I made those a little more compact and modern. I also changed their behavior so that they should work much faster now. Also, if you click on a student result and return to the Results page, you won’t lose your filter settings like before, which should reduce the number of times you have to click.

Next, I added a “Save and Display Next” button when you’re viewing an individual student result and want to move on to the next one without going back to the Results page:

Finally, to make the Results page load faster, I added shortlinks above the table of student  scores if there are more than 500 results to display:

Thanks so much to Jennifer and Andrew for reaching with ideas on how to improve the Dashboard! Suggestions like theirs have helped me significantly improve ChemQuiz.net since it first launched in 2020, so please keep giving me feedback and ideas.


Lots of bug fixes & other new features

Trying to improve the Results page on the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard introduced several new bugs and revealed some others that were already there, so I apologize if you stumbled across any of those. After the Dashboard issues were resolved, I found a number of other bugs while adding the multiple choice option to so many quizzes, so here’s a list of all the updates since the last newsletter:

Dashboard – these features and bug fixes also apply to PhysQuiz.net

  • new feature: added a “Save & Display Next” button which saves updates to that student result and then loads the next student (thanks, Jennifer!)
  • new feature: added individual page links to the top of the Results page when more than 500 results would be displayed
  • bug fix: most recent result for each student was not showing up due to an extra while loop (thanks, Kharma!)
  • bug fix: after updating a result, return the teacher to where they came from (gradebook or results, including filters) (thanks again, Jennifer!)
  • bug fix: filter menu on the Results page was preventing teachers from directly changing from one class to another (thanks, Andrew!)
  • bug fix: archived assignments weren’t hidden on the Results page (thanks again, Andrew!)
  • bug fix: creating a class from CSV input wouldn’t generate a join code for that class (thanks, Walt!)
  • bug fix: school student IDs weren’t showing up on the Students page (thanks again, Walt!)
  • bug fix: copying a school to PhysQuiz.net wasn’t creating the proper results table in the database (thanks again, Walt!)

All Quizzes

  • added option for multiple choice questions to 27 quizzes (10 quizzes already had MC)

Chemical Equilibrium Quiz

  • bug fix: chemical equations were sometimes used more than once in a set of problems

Concentrations of Solutions Quiz

  • bug fix: hydrate molar masses were not being calculated correctly (thanks, Susan!)

Electron Configuration Quiz

  • bug fix: correct answers weren’t being displayed for ion config & isoelectronic questions in printable key

Gas Laws Quiz

  • bug fix: gas names weren’t displaying properly

Mass Ratios, Percent Composition & Empirical Formulas Quiz

  • new feature: added hydrates to compound options

Molecular Geometry & VSEPR Quiz

  • bug fix: correct bond angle options were not being displayed for domains 5-7
  • bug fix: not enough information was being given for molecule polarity questions with diagrams so they now display the molecular formulas
  • bug fix: polarity answers in presentation mode were sometimes incorrect

Naming Compounds & Calculating Molar Masses Quiz

  • improvement: multiple choice question options are much, much better (thanks, Malcolm & Gerben!)
  • bug fix: settings from old assignments weren’t being converted properly, resulting in blank questions (thanks, Matthew!)
  • bug fix: serif font was inadvertently changed back to sans serif when I added the progress saving feature

Nuclear Reactions Quiz

  • bug fix: word problems were not displaying element names

Percent Error & Percent Yield Quiz

  • bug fix: some % yield problems were incorrectly solving for % error as correct answer

Stoichiometry & Limiting Reagents Quiz

  • bug fix: correct guesses were being marked as incorrect (thanks, Dorothy!)

Other improvements

  • improvement: purchased three additional CPUs for the web server to help the site run faster

I keep track of every issue or suggestion that I receive, but some bugs take a while to track down and fix, and new features can be challenging to add, so I truly appreciate your patience and understanding. ChemQuiz.net has improved significantly over the past three and a half years thanks to all the teachers and students who have sent in reports, so please keep sending them in!


Site licenses for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard

Site licenses for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard allow teachers to create assignments for their students and track their progress. Thanks so much to the many schools, colleges, universities and tutors who have renewed or purchased a site license for this school year! Site licenses are how I pay for web hosting and site security as well as the software I use to write and maintain the quizzes, and it keeps the website ad-free.

If you’d like to purchase a 12-month ChemQuiz.net site license or renew your existing license, you can pay in one of the following ways:

    • credit card through Square (the most popular option)
    • school purchase order (contact me for a sales quote – I’m also happy to fill out any paperwork required by your institution or state, and I’ve already completed student privacy paperwork for states such as CA, IL, WI, and the six state MA-ME-NH-NY-RI-VT Student Data Privacy Consortium)

Additional schools in the same district can purchase an add-on license for 50% off at just US$35 per school. If you also teach physics or you have a colleague who does, you can bundle a site license for the PhysQuiz.net Dashboard for just US$35 more! Please contact me if you have any questions about how to purchase a site license.

Finally, if you teach in a high poverty public school or district (at least 50% of your students on free/reduced lunch or designated “economically disadvantaged”), please 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!). I want ChemQuiz.net to continue to be a useful resource for as many students as possible.


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 list of supporters on the About 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 X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and Threads and share my updates with your fellow Chemistry teachers!

Last year, I noticed that a lot of teachers had signed up for ChemQuiz.net after hearing about it on a very large Chemistry teachers group on Facebook, so I signed up for it so I could promote the site and possibly contribute some of my other resources. Last week I saw a teacher in the group post a great bulletin board display for Black History Month called “Celebrating African-American champions of Science & Engineering“. Unfortunately, I don’t know who created this excellent resource, but I thought I’d share it in case you were looking for something to hang up in your classroom! Our science department just put this up in our hallway display case this past Friday during our lunch period and we had a lot of fun doing it.

Once again, thank you for your continued support of ChemQuiz.net! I hope that the year has started well for you and that you’re able to make it through these next few months until Spring (in North America, at least!). Please feel free to reach out to me via the Contact form or at chris@chemquiz.net if you have any questions or concerns. Take care!

-Chris

Categories
News

January 2024 newsletter: new progress saving feature, tab-switch detection, updated pricing and more!

I hope you had a good winter break and a Happy New Year! In this newsletter, I’ve included the following important updates about ChemQuiz.net:

  • *NEW* Progress saving feature for students!
  • *NEW* Browser tab switch tracking!
  • Lots of bug fixes & new features
  • Updated pricing for ChemQuiz.net Dashboard site licenses

*NEW* Progress saving feature!

In addition to the new Exams feature that I added last month, a highly requested feature for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard has been to allow students to save their progress while they’re working on an assignment. I’ve seen the need for this feature with my own students – they’re in class working hard on stoichiometry problems when the bell rings and they’re worried about losing their work so far. I would do my best to reassure them that they could just keep going if they left the tab open, but invariably their Chromebook battery would die, causing it to restart and lose all of their progress.

To solve this problem, teachers can now activate the “Save progress” feature on any assignment they create on the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard by checking this box:

Allow students to save their progress and resume later

Once activated (it’s off by default), this feature will display a pink “Save your progress” button at the bottom of each assignment:

Save your progress

Progress will then be saved for the next 30 days, after which it will be cleared out. Students must be logged in and working on an assignment in order to use this feature – it doesn’t work if they’re not logged in, and it only works on assignments where their teacher has activated the feature. There’s no limit to the number of times students can use this feature on an assignment, but due dates and “Lock after due date” settings still apply, so if a student doesn’t click the “Grade it!” button by the due date, their answers won’t be submitted. It’s like I tell my own students: if you don’t give me the paper, then I can’t grade it! 😁

I spent a lot of time testing out progress saving on all 37 quizzes on ChemQuiz.net, but like all new features, I recommend trying it out with a test account or a small group of your students first. Despite my best efforts, there may be some bugs that I hadn’t anticipated, so please let me know if you find any! Like all Dashboard features, the “Save progress” feature is also immediately available on PhysQuiz.net.

Thanks to everyone who requested this new feature, including Lan, Krisha, Andrew, and Marilyn! I prioritize adding new features based on teacher requests and feedback, so if you have any suggestions to help me keep improving ChemQuiz.net, please let me know!


*NEW* Browser tab switch tracking!

Around the same time that I released the new Exams feature, I received a request from a teacher to look into making ChemQuiz.net work with a “secure browser” so that students can’t switch away from an assignment. I thought this was a great idea, so I reached out to a company that makes one of the most popular secure browsers and asked for their pricing. We scheduled a remote meeting, and they were really nice, but… let’s just say that their yearly licensing fee was a little out of my price range. 😳 Maybe in a few years!

Instead, I did a little research and I was able to add a new security feature instead: Tab switch tracking! Teachers can now activate this feature on any assignment or exam they create on the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard by checking this box:

Track the number of times a student switches browser tabs

The number of times a student switches tabs away from your assignment or exam will now show up on the Results page of the Dashboard when you hover over the score:

The number of tab switches will also show up on the result details page.

Please note two important aspects of this new feature: first, it does not prevent students from switching away during an assignment or exam. Without a “secure browser” or specialized testing software that’s designed specifically for that purpose, there’s no way to stop tab switches from happening. Second, when this feature is activated, it displays a notice at the top of the assignment to students telling them that their tab switches will be tracked and recorded.

By adding tab-switch tracking to the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard, my goal was to give teachers a feature that would discourage cheating and allow them to have a conversation with their students about cheating while also respecting students’ ability to make informed decisions about their own behavior. This new feature has already been used in 278 assignments at 63 different schools since it was added, so it seems like it’s a pretty popular addition so far.

Thanks so much to Delora for reaching out and suggesting looking into the “secure browser” feature! Suggestions like hers have helped me significantly improve ChemQuiz.net since it first launched in 2020, so please keep sending them in.


Lots of bug fixes & new features

The new Exams feature that I introduced last month unintentionally resulted in several bugs that impacted how the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard works 🤦🏻‍♂️. Fortunately, those bugs were reported quickly and were all relatively easy to fix, so while I was working on the Dashboard code I took care of a number of other issues and added a few new features as well. Here’s a list of all the updates since the last newsletter:

Dashboard – these features and bug fixes also apply to PhysQuiz.net

  • new feature: allow teachers to track the number of times students switch between tabs (thanks, Delora!)
  • new feature: new “site announcements” box at the top of Dashboard
  • improvement: added printable mode for exams (thanks, Teri!)
  • improvement: cleaned up appearance on student “Current Assignments” page
  • bug fix: a large number of results at a school (>40,000) would generate a 503 “Unavailable” error, so I split up the results database table and it seems to be running much faster (thanks, Lan!)
  • bug fix: added links above the students results table on the Results page to support schools with more than 5,000 results (thanks, Dorothy, John and Katie!)
  • bug fix: assignments were still showing on the student “Current Assignments” page even if students had met the threshold (thanks, Jason!)
  • bug fix: assignments by colleagues for other classes were showing up even though those classes weren’t shared (thanks, Maggie!)
  • bug fix: some assignment information would not show up for colleagues on the result details pages

Exam feature bug fixes:

  • bug fix: “Continue Exam” button wasn’t working properly for teacher previews (thanks, Scott!)
  • bug fix: when trying to create an assignment, the drop-down menu to select a quiz was disabled (thanks, Aaron!)
  • bug fix: some posted assignments were not showing up for students (thanks, Michele and Dawn!)
  • bug fix: inactive assignments were not loading properly in exams (thanks, Ann!)
  • bug fix: the open and close dates were not being loaded correctly for exams (thanks, Mike!)
  • bug fix: using apostrophes in the exam section instructions would break insertion into the database (thanks, Monique!)

All Quizzes

  • new feature: students can save their assignment progress and complete it at a later time (thanks Lan, Krisha, Andrew and Marilyn!)
  • maintenance: removed the outdated “Print Preview” notice
  • maintenance: cleaned up and removed a lot of vestigial code from various quizzes

Balancing, Identifying & Predicting Chemical Equations Quiz

  • new feature: physical states are now removed from student answers for predicting reactions (thanks, Dorothy!)
  • improvement: added instructions to not include physical state with predictions (thanks again, Dorothy!)
  • bug fix: answer options for predicting reaction products were repeating for multiple choice questions (thanks, Andrew!)
  • bug fix: separated out neutralization reactions so that they’re not automatically included with double replacement reactions (thanks, Bruce!)

Chemical Equilibrium Quiz

  • bug fix: chemical equilibrium expression questions were asking for the wrong wanted value

Chemical Thermodynamics Quiz

  • bug fix: “Load More Problems Like This” button after completing the quiz was generating empty results

Electron Configuration Quiz

  • new feature: option to find the electron configuration of an ion (thanks, Sylvie!)
  • new feature: option to find an element that is isoelectronic with a given electron configuration  (thanks again, Sylvie!)
  • new feature: added an option to require configurations be written in filling order, not energy order (thanks, Monique!)
  • bug fix: “aluminum” and “cesium” were not accepted as correct answers (thanks again, Monique!)
  • bug fix: limiting problems by element number and selected only d- or f-blocks would result in blank questions

Elements & Isotopes Quiz

  • bug fix: selected problem types were not evenly distributed across questions (thanks, Scott!)
  • bug fix: quiz was grading “phantom” problems that were never actually generated

Enthalpy Calculations Quiz

  • bug fix: hydrate formulas weren’t being displayed correctly

Naming Compounds & Calculating Molar Masses Quiz

  • new feature: added option for hydrates with 106 new chemicals in the database (thanks, Sylvie!)
  • improvement: now accepts answers without the words “gas”, “liquid” or “solid” (thanks, Susan!)
  • bug fix: improved filtering of selected ionic compounds (thanks, Darlene and Nick!)

Organic Nomenclature Quiz

  • bug fix: certain settings would cause the quiz to become trapped in an infinite loop, which would slow down the server

I keep track of every issue or suggestion that’s sent in, but some bugs take a while to track down and fix, and new features can be challenging to add, so I appreciate your patience and understanding. ChemQuiz.net has improved significantly over the past three and a half years thanks to all the teachers and students who have sent in reports, so please keep sending them in!


Updated site license pricing for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard

When I first started ChemQuiz.net in the summer of 2020, there were only 10 quizzes and the Dashboard had very few features. I’d signed up 31 schools and a private tutor, and during that school year the site served about 1,000 students. I was using shared web hosting to keep costs down because I wasn’t charging for site licenses yet, and as a result the site would often run slowly or refuse to load entirely.

Fast forward to today, and the site has grown significantly! I’ve added 27 new quizzes and lots of new features, and as a result, lots of new schools. Currently, there are over 1,000 teachers at 242 schools in five countries using ChemQuiz.net with over 15,000 active student accounts. By the end of December, there were already more quiz results from this school year than in the previous two school years combined. I’m amazed at how much the site has grown in such a short amount of time and absolutely humbled by the support and feedback I’ve received from Chemistry teachers around the world – and even from some of their students!

Because of this growth, the site takes up pretty much all of my time outside of school, and I’ve had to invest in much more robust (and expensive) web hosting as well as purchasing additional security software to keep the site as safe as possible. In order to keep the site ad-free and financially sustainable, I’ve made the difficult decision to raise the price of an annual site license.

Going forward, a site license for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard will cost $US70 for 12 months. This is a change from the previous license term, which was based on the American school year (July 1st to June 30th). The 12-month term begins when payment or a purchase order number is received, or when the current site license expires, whichever is later. This means that, for example, if you renew your site license in April of this year, 12 months will be added on to your July 1st expiration date.

Site licenses will remain by building, so one license still applies to every teacher and student in your entire school. Additional schools in the same district can purchase an add-on license for 50% off at just US$35 per school. If you also teach physics or you have a colleague who does, you can bundle a site license for the PhysQuiz.net Dashboard for just US$35 more.

If you’d like to purchase a 12-month ChemQuiz.net site license or renew your existing license, you can pay in one of the following ways:

    • credit card through Square (the most popular option)
    • school purchase order (contact me for a sales quote – I’m happy to fill out any paperwork required by your institution or state and I’ve already completed student privacy paperwork for several states, including CA, IL and WI)

The new pricing will also allow me to continue offering free site licenses to high poverty public schools with at least 50% of their students on free/reduced lunch or designated “economically disadvantaged”. If you teach at a school that has these demographics, please 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!). I want ChemQuiz.net to continue to be a useful resource for as many students as possible.


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 list of supporters on the About 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 X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and Threads and share my updates with your fellow Chemistry teachers!

Now that I’ve added these new features and fixed these bugs, I’d like to get back to writing some new quizzes and adding some new options to existing quizzes to flesh them out a bit. We start back at my school on Monday and I’ll be teaching six preps this semester 😱 because we’re bringing back the Climate Science elective that I haven’t taught for a year and a half. My students have gotten a lot out of that class in the past, so I’m really looking forward to teaching it again!

Once again, thank you for your continued support of ChemQuiz.net! I hope that 2024 goes well for you and your families, colleagues and students. Please reach out to me via the Contact form or at chris@chemquiz.net if you have any questions or concerns. Take care and stay safe!

-Chris

Categories
News

December 2023 newsletter: new “Exam” feature, and more!

Hello again! I hope everyone in the US had a Happy Thanksgiving and enjoyed some time off from school. I know it’s a little early, but I wanted to get December’s newsletter out to you now so that I could tell you about the big new feature available on ChemQuiz.net just in time for end of semester review – Exams!

In this newsletter, I’ve included important information about these topics:

  • *NEW* Exam assignment mode!
  • Lots of new features & bug fixes
  • Site licenses for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard (and PhysQuiz.net!)

*NEW* Exam assignment mode!

Since I started ChemQuiz.net, one of the most commonly requested features for the Dashboard has been to allow teachers to build an assignment from multiple quizzes. As a longtime science teacher, I’ve given my own students many, many review packets before semester, final and AP exams, so I’ve wanted to do the same for ChemQuiz.net but couldn’t quite figure out how to do it – until now!

Starting immediately, you can build an “Exam” assignment on the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard from existing assignments or exemplars by following these steps:

  1. Click on “Assignments” in the top menu of the Dashboard to go to the Assignments page.
  2. Click the pink “Create an assignment” button:

  1. In the first row of the table, check the box next to “Create an exam from multiple assignments”:

NOTE: Do not select a quiz at this point; you’ll do that later.

  1. In the second row, enter a custom name for the exam – this is a required step for exams!
  2. Fill out the rest of the form just like you would for any other assignment.
  3. Uncheck the Activation box at the bottom of the form (recommended but not required):

  1. Click the pink “Save and Select Additional Options” button:

  1. This will load the Options page where you’ll select the assignments that you’ll use for each section of your exam:

Enter the following information for each section:

  • Section name (recommended but not required)
  • Assignment (required)
  • # of Questions (required)
  • Section instructions (recommended but not required)
  1. To add another section to the exam, click the pink “Add another section” button. Exams can have up to 10 sections.
  2. Click the Activation checkbox to activate your exam.
  3. Click the pink “Save Exam Options” button, and you’re done!

I recommend clicking the “Preview” link next to your new exam on the Assignments page so that you can see what an exam assignment looks like. When a student takes an exam, it will take them to a new Exam launch page that tells them how many questions and sections are on the exam. If you set an access code, the page will ask for it before starting the exam. Here’s an example screenshot:

After a student completes a section, instead of showing their results, it displays a message that their responses have been saved and asks them to move on to the next section of the exam, like this:

If a student stops working on an exam and comes back to it later, it’ll pick up from the last section they completed. Once they’ve completed the final section, they’ll be presented with a big pink button that says “Submit Exam for Grading“:

IMPORTANT: Students must click on the “Submit Exam for Grading” button to make their score and responses visible to you in the Dashboard. Depending on your settings, the Exam page will either show their score and results, just their score, or hide both until you release them in the Dashboard.

I’ve tried to make Exams as easy as possible for students to complete, but I recommend walking through the process with your students beforehand to make sure they understand each step. Also, since it’s a brand new feature, there may be some bugs that I hadn’t anticipated, so please let me know if you find any! Like all Dashboard features, the Exam feature is also immediately available on PhysQuiz.net.

If you’re interested in using the Exam feature on the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard but you don’t currently have a site license, it’s not too late to purchase one for the 2023-2024 school year! You can purchase a site license through Square or using a variety of other payment methods, including school purchase order. Please reach out to me if you have any questions!

Thanks to the many teachers who’ve reached out and requested this new feature, including Barbara, Abby, Kelly, Helen and Susan! Teacher feedback makes it easier for me to prioritize which new quizzes and features I should work on, so if you have any suggestions to improve ChemQuiz.net, please contact me!


Lots of new features & bug fixes

Most of my time working on the site over the last two months has been taken up by creating the new Exams feature, updating code so I can update the server software so it runs faster, and writing two very long proposals to the Ohio Department of Education (which they very politely rejected 😭). Fortunately, a number of your fellow teachers – and some students! – suggested new features and helped me track down bugs so that ChemQuiz.net is better for everyone. Here are the latest updates:

Dashboard – these features and bug fixes also apply to PhysQuiz.net

  • new feature: allow teachers to build exams from multiple quizzes (thanks to Barbara, Abby, Kelly, Helen and Susan!)
  • new feature: ChemQuiz.net Teacher Manual for download or printing – latest version always available at chemquiz.net/manual, Ohio version is available at chemquiz.net/ohiomanual
  • improvement: cleaned up the student Dashboard interface to be easier to read
  • bug fix: when updating a student result without leaving a comment, it could crash Dashboard and not save the update due to an incorrect mysql statement
  • bug fix: “States of Matter” and “Types of Matter” exemplar assignments were swapped (thanks, Monique!)
  • bug fix: many, many bug fixes and coding improvements to prepare for upcoming server upgrade

All Quizzes

  • improvement: custom assignment title now shows on grading page for all quizzes

Balancing, Identifying & Predicting Chemical Equations Quiz

  • improvement: reaction type options for multiple choice now match the reaction type options selected for the quiz (thanks, Katharine!)
  • improvement: quiz now uses “synthesis” instead of “combination” (thanks again, Katharine!)

Bond Polarity & Electronegativity Quiz

  • new feature: added electronegativities handout to the Helpful Chemistry Handouts page (thanks, Cynthia!)
  • bug fix: delta notation was incorrectly being used for nonpolar and ionic bonds (thanks, Andrew!)
  • bug fix: quiz was generating too many problems with the same bonds over and over again

Elements & Isotopes Quiz

  • new feature: option to generate questions about whether an element is a metal, metalloid or nonmetal (thanks, Anamar!)
  • new feature: option to generate questions about which group an element belongs to (thanks again, Anamar!)
  • new feature: options to generate questions about an element’s group number and period number
  • improvement: replaced isotope notation SVG images with MathML for better readability and compatibility with screen readers
  • bug fix: quiz generated empty values for artificial elements and would sometimes crash due to lack of isotope data

Gas Laws Quiz

  • new feature: added option to only generate questions to solve for final values in problems involving change (e.g., Boyle’s, Charles’, Gay-Lussac’s & Combined Gas Laws)

Hess’s Law Quiz

  • bug fix: solution setup for heats of formation problems was missing a closing mtext tag which caused formatting issues in Google Chrome

Kinetics & Rate Laws Quiz

  • bug fix: second-order problems should only calculate concentration, not pressure (thanks, Mary Ann!)

Lewis Dot Structures Quiz

  • improvement: moved the function to generate SVG images into quiz instead of using a separate program in order to decrease load on web server

Molecular Geometry & VSEPR Quiz

  • bug fix: CH2O and COCl2 should be polar but AX3E0 molecules are typically trigonal planar (thanks, Christina!)

Naming Compounds & Calculating Molar Masses Quiz

  • new feature: added options to generate questions with diatomic gases and the first 10 simple hydrocarbons (thanks, Susan!)
  • improvement: changed to a serif font to better differentiate between uppercase “I” and lowercase “l” (thanks, Luke!)
  • bug fix: molar masses weren’t being calculated correctly for compounds with multiple polyatomic ions, so I updated the quiz to pull molar masses from a database table instead (thanks, Rob!)

Nuclear Reactions Quiz

  • improvement: replaced isotope notation SVG images with MathML for better readability and compatibility with screen readers
  • bug fix: positrons were showing up as protons (thanks, Van!)

Periodic Trends Quiz

  • bug fix: quiz was scoring answers accurately but marked them all as correct (thanks, Kharma!)

Scientific Measurements Quiz

  • improvement: made the placeholder values in each input field match the diagram (e.g., “temperature”, “length”, “volume”)

SI Conversions Quiz

  • improvement: given values are now bold like in other quizzes

Solubility Quiz

  • bug fix: some molar solubility values for mercury(I) compounds were incorrect (thanks, Mary Ann!)

Other improvements

  • checkout button for purchasing a site license on Square did not work, so I had to generate a new checkout link (thanks, Judith and Jason!)

I do my best to keep track of every bug or issue that gets reported as well as every new quiz suggestion that’s sent in. New features and quizzes take time to develop properly, and some bugs are easier to fix than others, so I appreciate your patience! ChemQuiz.net has improved significantly over the past three and a half years thanks to all the teachers and students who have sent in reports, so please keep sending them in!


Site licenses for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard

Site licenses for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard allow teachers to create assignments for their students and track their progress. Thanks so much to the 105 schools, colleges, universities and tutors who have renewed or purchased a site license for the 2023-2024 school year! Site licenses are how I pay for web hosting and site security as well as the software I use to write and maintain the quizzes, and it keeps the website ad-free.

If you’d like to purchase a ChemQuiz.net site license for the 2023-2024 school year for just US$50, you can pay in the following ways:

  • credit card through Square (the most popular option)
  • school purchase order (contact me for a sales quote – I’m happy to fill out any paperwork required by your institution or state)
  • personal check
  • CashApp, PayPal, Venmo or Zelle at chris@chemquiz.net

Remember, site licenses are by building, so one license applies to every teacher and student in your entire school! Additional schools in the same district can purchase an add-on license for just US$25 per school.

If you also teach physics or you have a colleague who does, you can bundle a site license for the PhysQuiz.net Dashboard for just US$25 more! Please contact me if you have any questions about how to purchase a site license.

Finally, if you teach in a high poverty public school or district (at least 50% of your students on free/reduced lunch or designated “economically disadvantaged”), please 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!). I want ChemQuiz.net to be a useful resource for as many students as possible.


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 list of supporters on the About page! Go to the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard, click on “Your Info” in the top menu bar, check 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 X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and Threads and share my updates with your fellow Chemistry teachers!

I hope the new Exams feature helps your students prepare for any upcoming semester or final exams! I’m looking forward to getting feedback about how you’ve used it in your classes.

Thanks so much for your continued support of ChemQuiz.net! I hope this last month of 2023 wraps up well for you and your colleagues. Please feel free to reach out any time via the Contact form or at chris@chemquiz.net if you have any questions, comments, or concerns. Take care, and Happy Holidays!

-Chris

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News

October 2023 newsletter: essential site resources, bug fixes, and more!

Hi there! I hope that the school year has started well for all of you, and with any luck, your students are settling down into your classroom routines now that we’ve made it to October.

In this newsletter, I’ve included important information about these topics:

  • Essential site resources for teachers
  • New features & bug fixes
  • Site licenses for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard (and PhysQuiz.net!)

Essential site resources for teachers

Welcome to the 30 new schools and their teachers who have signed up for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard during the month of September! That’s an average of one new school per day. By comparison, there were 79 schools that signed up in the site’s entire first year of existence (2020-2021), so I’m glad to see that interest in ChemQuiz.net continues to grow.

With so many teachers joining the community of 225 high schools, tutors, colleges and universities that are using ChemQuiz.net Dashboard, I wanted to point out some essential resources and features that I’ve created to make the site as easy to use as possible:

ChemQuiz.net Documentation – Step-by-step instructions on how to do just about everything on the site, including the multiple ways to create student accounts and how to change their passwords, which are two of the most common actions at the start of the school year. If you’re not sure of how to do something, check here first!

Assignment exemplars – The ChemQuiz.net Dashboard contains pre-made assignments for each of the quizzes under the “Exemplars” menu to try to make life easier for teachers! The exemplars are broken out by nine major topics in chemistry, and you can make a copy of any of them for your students by clicking the “make a copy” link”. You can also preview them, generate printable versions for a quick worksheet, or load them in presentation mode for a bell ringer activity or full class review. All of the exemplars start with 10 questions and have a threshold of 8 correct answers to pass, but you can modify these values when you make your own copies. Please note that exemplars are only available to teachers with active ChemQuiz.net Dashboard licenses.

Contact form – If you can’t find the answer you need in the documentation, or if you come across a bug that’s causing the Dashboard or a quiz to behave strangely, please reach out and let me know! I try my best to resolve bugs as quickly as possible, and I want the site to be useful and accurate for you and your students, so drop me a line any time. You can also email me directly at chris@chemquiz.net. Even if I can’t fix the issue immediately, I want to hear about it so I can continue to improve the site. (Like most of you, I’m a full-time high school teacher, so I appreciate your patience as I can only respond outside of school hours.)

I hope these resources help you get the most out of ChemQuiz.net! If you think of something that will make the site better for you and your fellow Chemistry colleagues, please let me know.


New features & bug fixes

I’m teaching five preps this year 😱, including three different levels of Computer Science, so while I haven’t had a lot of time to write any new quizzes, I’ve tracked down and fixed a number of bugs that have been pointed out by your fellow teachers.

Dashboard – these features and bug fixes also apply to PhysQuiz.net

  • new feature: improved the Quiz Results filter menus
  • new feature: teachers can now create copies of assignments shared by colleagues (thanks, Bill and Sarah!)
  • new feature: added a “Export” top menu item and removed the redundant “All Quizzes” menu item
  • bug fix: student results were not showing up for teachers if the assignment was created for a shared class by another teacher (thanks again, Bill and Sarah!)
  • bug fix: teachers couldn’t see filter menus or checkboxes when all their results had been archived (thanks, Andrew!)
  • bug fix: teachers could unintentionally create a duplicate student account with an already existing username, which could cause login issues (thanks, Lauren!)
  • bug fix: teachers couldn’t add a student to a class when directly editing their account (thanks, Dorothy!)
  • maintenance: removed option for email notifications due to past spam issues

All Quizzes

  • maintenance: updated all quizzes to directly pass the generated question to the grading page; this was a first step in adding a feature for students to save a quiz so they can come back to it later

Average Atomic Masses Quiz

  • bug fix: students couldn’t retake a quiz because the database wasn’t storing the correct given values (thanks, Ann!)
  • bug fix: selecting ones place precision caused the quiz to crash 🤦🏻‍♂️

Balancing, Identifying & Predicting Chemical Equations Quiz

  • new feature: added an option for text input boxes for coefficients so that it’s a little easier to use on mobile devices

Chemical Thermodynamics Quiz

  • bug fix: some calculations for ΔG used R without converting to kJ first (thanks, Aaron!)
  • bug fix: updated quiz language to use “thermodynamically favorable” instead of “spontaneous” (thanks, Susan!)

Electron Configuration Quiz

  • new feature: added an option to limit elements to 1-56 (thanks, Malcolm!)
  • new feature: added an option to exclude elements that violate the Madelung rule (thanks again, Malcolm!)

Laboratory Equipment Quiz

  • maintenance: changed how images are generated, which should help the quiz load faster

Lewis Dot Structures Quiz

  • bug fix: Lewis dot diagrams weren’t loading due to an XML parsing error (thanks, Cori!)

Types of Matter Quiz

  • bug fix: students were being prevented from retaking the quiz through Dashboard (thanks, Katie!)

Molar Conversions Quiz

  • bug fix: the “Load More Problems Like This” button generated blank problems when I changed how the questions were displayed

Naming Compounds & Calculating Molar Masses Quiz

  • bug fix: molar mass entries by students were not being passed by the form (thanks, Corey!)
  • bug fix: the “Load More Problems Like This” button generated blank problems when I changed how the questions were displayed
  • bug fix: fixed table layouts when choosing molar masses or both question types

Organic Nomenclature Quiz

  • bug fix: most multiple choice options were blank for class questions (thanks, Alan!)
  • maintenance: changed how images are generated, which should help the quiz load faster

Scientific Notation Quiz

  • bug fix: multiple choice options for sig fig questions weren’t valid due to the commas added to large numbers (thanks, Dorothy!)

Stoichiometry & Limiting Reagents Quiz

  • bug fix: student responses weren’t being compared correctly to the rounded answer (thanks, Don!)

Thermochemical Equations Quiz

  • bug fix: solution setups erroneously included a mole ratio when it wasn’t needed  (thanks, James!)

Other improvements

  • purchased an additional CPU to improve site speed
  • changed PHP-FPM configuration to prevent server lockups

I keep track of every bug or issue that gets reported as well as every new quiz suggestion that’s sent in, so I’ll continue to address those as they come in. New features and quizzes can take a while to develop properly, and some bugs are easier to fix than others, so I appreciate your patience! ChemQuiz.net has improved significantly over the past three years thanks to all the teachers and students who have sent in reports, so please keep sending them in!


Site licenses for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard

Site licenses for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard allow teachers to create assignments for their students and track their progress. Thanks so much to the 90 schools and tutors who have renewed or purchased a site license for the 2023-2024 school year! Site licenses are how I pay for the web hosting and the software I use to write and maintain the quizzes, and it keeps the website ad-free.

If you’d like to purchase a ChemQuiz.net site license for the 2023-2024 school year for just US$50, you can pay in the following ways:

  • credit card through Square (the most popular option)
  • school purchase order (contact me for a sales quote – I’m happy to fill out any paperwork required by your school, district or state (I’m looking at you, Illinois!))
  • personal check
  • CashApp, PayPal, Venmo or Zelle at chris@chemquiz.net

Remember, site licenses are by building, so one license applies to every teacher and student in your entire school! Additional schools in the same district can purchase an add-on license for just US$25 per school.

If you also teach physics or you have a colleague who does, you can bundle a site license for the PhysQuiz.net Dashboard for just US$25 more! Please contact me if you have any questions about how to purchase a site license.

Remember, if you teach in a high poverty public school or district (at least 50% of your students on free/reduced lunch or designated “economically disadvantaged”), please 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 list of supporters on the About page! Go to the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard, click on “Your Info” in the top menu bar, check 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 X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and Threads and share my updates with your fellow Chemistry teachers!

I mentioned earlier that I’m teaching five preps, which makes it a little challenging to know what I’m doing from one class period to the next 😅, but one free resource that has really helped me out is Carnegie Mellon University’s CS Academy. If you have any students who are interested in coding, or if you’re looking to bring computer science to your school, their curriculum is great! We use their CS1 curriculum for our “Intro to CS” course, and I’ve had students complete it on their own as an independent study. Debugging student code in CS Academy has actually helped me find and fix the bugs on ChemQuiz.net, so I figured they deserved a shout out!

Thanks so much for your continued support of ChemQuiz.net! I hope you’re all hitting your stride this fall, and please feel free to reach out any time via the Contact form or at chris@chemquiz.net if you have any questions, comments, or concerns. Take care!

-Chris

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News

September 2023: new account creation features, bug fixes, and more!

Hello again! I hope everyone has had a good start to the school year, and if you’re in the United States, you’ve been able to take some time to relax and enjoy Labor Day weekend.

In this newsletter, I’ve included important information about these topics:

  • New student account creation features
  • Issues with website security software
  • New features & bug fixes
  • Site licenses for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard (and PhysQuiz.net!)

New student account creation features

So far, teachers have already created 6,322 new student accounts for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard since July 1, 2023. For the entire previous school year, there were 12,333 student accounts, so we’ve already added over half as many as last year, and September just started! 😱

While most student accounts have been created without any problems, there have been a few issues that have popped up that have been brought to my attention by a number of teachers. One of the main issues is that students never receive a registration email that allows them to set their password because their district blocks outside emails.

To try to resolve this issue, I’ve added two new features that I think will help:

1. Students can now set their password when they’re using a join code. This solution is so obvious that I don’t know why it took me so long to think of it. 🤦🏻‍♂️ Once a student has successfully created their account, they can go to the Login page and get started in the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard immediately.

2. Teachers can now set student passwords when creating accounts with a CSV file. If you use another LMS like Google Classroom or Canvas, or an online gradebook like ProgressBook, you can export your list of students as a CSV file (“comma separated values”) and add a column for passwords. You can also make a copy of the Google Sheet that I’ve created for this purpose and enter your students’ email addresses, names and passwords, and then export it as a CSV or get the share link and use that in the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard to import your student accounts. (Thanks for the suggestion, Chris!)

Also, if your school uses Google for Education, encourage your students to use the “Log in with Google” button! Unfortunately, I’ve heard from two teachers who have encountered an error that says “Access blocked: Your institution’s admin needs to review ChemQuiz.net” when students try to log in. If you see this message, you’ll need to get in contact with your district’s tech support to get this resolved in the Google Admin panel.

Don’t forget: you can manually set student passwords in the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard, and you can also generate random passwords for them using the “bulk actions” menu on the Students page.

I’m hoping these new features make the onboarding process a little bit easier for you and your students! However, if you encounter any issues, please reach out to me and I’ll be happy to help you.


Issues with website security software

As I mentioned in last month’s newsletter, I migrated ChemQuiz.net to a new web hosting company in early July so that I could improve the site’s speed and reliability. I’ve been really happy with their support staff, and they’ve been extremely helpful (and patient!) with resolving the issues that typically occur whenever a site migrates. It was definitely the right decision to move.

Having said that, there have been a few glitches due to their robust security software. Combine that with the additional security software that I’m running, and there have been a number of “false positives” that have prevented students from completing assignments or being able to access the site at all.

Thanks to the detailed emails and screenshots from a number of teachers, I’ve fixed several of the “Forbidden” errors that teachers and students have experienced recently, particularly with the Naming Compounds & Calculating Molar Masses Quiz. If you come across one of these errors, please let me know the date and time that it happened to you so I can track it down in the server logs. The more details you can send me, the better.

Another issue that a number of schools have experienced is when the Wordfence security software blocks them entirely from accessing the site. This happens when too many students try to log in with an incorrect password and the school or district is behind a proxy that makes all of the individual student devices look like one IP address. I’ve relaxed a lot of these settings but I can’t disable them entirely because the site is under attack on a regular basis, like most websites are.

I’m hoping that the new student account creation features will decrease the number of failed login attempts, but in the meantime, if you’re about to onboard your classes, try googling “what’s my IP address” while you’re at school and send me the result. That way, I can add your school’s IP address to a whitelist so that it’s ignored by some of the security software, which makes it less likely that you’ll get blocked. It’s not an ideal solution, but it works!


New quiz features & bug fixes

There are no new quizzes this month, but I’ve added some new features and fixed some bugs to help ChemQuiz.net run more smoothly for you and your students.

Dashboard – these features and bug fixes also apply to PhysQuiz.net

  • added ability to set student password on CSV upload or when creating account (thanks, Chris!)
  • quiz completion time was sometimes saved using local timezone instead of UTC (thanks, Racquel!)

All Quizzes

  • added quiz option headers to some quiz forms so the options are better organized
  • teachers can now prevent students from seeing scores or correct answers in an assignment (thanks, Jennifer & Laura!)

Chemical Equilibrium Quiz

  • added an option to only include Kc equations
  • added an option to use Keq label for all problems (thanks, Helen!)

Chemical Thermodynamics Quiz

  • quiz gave an empty settings error for mass/moles even if the question type didn’t require it

Elements & Isotopes Quiz

  • isotope notation SVGs weren’t displaying (thanks, Mary Ann!)

Kinetics & Rate Laws Quiz

  • added more granular question options (e.g., disable the instantaneous rate option) (thanks again, Helen!)
  • fixed solution for instantaneous rate law so that it uses values from the given table (thanks, Susan!)

Naming Compounds & Calculating Molar Masses Quiz

  • Apache ModSecurity rule was preventing submission of answers for large quizzes (25+ questions) (thanks again, Mary Ann!)

Solubility Quiz

  • mercury(II) hydroxide was entered incorrectly in the database (thanks again, Mary Ann!)

Other new features and bug fixes

  • added ability for students to set password on registration form with join code
  • creating a student account with join code for inactive class may create a user associated with a non-existent school
  • school join codes weren’t being recognized properly (thanks, Blake!)
  • Apache ModSecurity was preventing submission of URLs on Teacher Interest form

I keep track of every bug or issue that gets reported as well as every new quiz suggestion that’s sent in, so I’ll continue to address those as they come in. New features and quizzes can take a while to develop properly, and some bugs are easier to fix than others, so I appreciate your patience! ChemQuiz.net has improved significantly over the past three years thanks to all the teachers and students who have sent in reports, so please keep sending them in!


Site licenses for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard

Site licenses for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard allow teachers to create assignments for their students and track their progress. Thanks so much to the 66 schools and tutors who have renewed or purchased a site license for the 2023-2024 school year! Site licenses are also how I pay for the web hosting and the software I use to write the quizzes, and it keeps the website ad-free.

If you’d like to purchase a ChemQuiz.net site license for the 2023-2024 school year for just US$50, you can pay in the following ways:

  • credit card through Square (the most popular option)
  • school purchase order (contact me for a sales quote – I’m happy to fill out any paperwork required by your school or district!)
  • personal check
  • CashApp, PayPal, Venmo or Zelle at chris@chemquiz.net

Remember, site licenses are by building, so one license applies to every teacher and student in your entire school! Additional schools in the same district can purchase an add-on license for just US$25 per school.

If you also teach physics or you have a colleague who does, you can bundle a site license for the PhysQuiz.net Dashboard for just US$25 more! Please contact me if you have any questions about how to purchase a site license.

One last thing – if you teach in a high poverty public school or district (at least 50% of your students on free/reduced lunch or designated “economically disadvantaged”), please 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 list of supporters on the About page! Go to the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard, click on “Your Info” in the top menu bar, check 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 X (Twitter), Facebook and Threads and share my updates with your fellow Chemistry teachers!

I hope the school year has started well for everyone so far! After mild temperatures and lots of rain in northeast Ohio for most of the summer, we’re looking at a heat wave this upcoming week that’s going to push the limits of our HVAC systems. I just moved to a new classroom that used to have the best air conditioning in the building, but for some reason it suddenly stopped working this summer! 😩I might have to take my afternoon classes on a spontaneous tour of the walk-in freezer next to the cafeteria just to make it through the heat.

Thanks again for your support of ChemQuiz.net! Please reach out any time via the Contact form or at chris@chemquiz.net if you have any questions, comments, or concerns. Take care!

-Chris

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News

August 2023: new quiz, introducing PhysQuiz.net, and more!

Welcome back! I hope those of you who were on summer break got lots of rest and relaxation so that you’re ready to tackle the upcoming school year.

In this newsletter, I’ve included important information about the following topics:

  • *NEW* Chemical Thermodynamics Quiz!
  • *NEW* website: PhysQuiz.net!
  • Upgraded web hosting for faster quiz loading
  • New features & bug fixes
  • Site licenses for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard

There’s lots of new stuff to cover, so let’s get started!


*NEW* Chemical Thermodynamics Quiz

  • determine change in entropy (ΔS°) and Gibbs free energy (ΔG°) in chemical reactions
  • determine if chemical reactions are spontaneous or nonspontaneous
  • calculate chemical equilibrium constants (K) and reaction quotients (Q) from free energy values
  • aligns with Next Generation Science Standards Performance Expectations “HS-PS1-4:  Matter and its Interactions” and “HS-PS3-1: Energy”

This new quiz should help your students in advanced or second year Chemistry courses to get a better grasp on some really challenging thermodynamics concepts, so check it out and let me know what you think. Thanks to Kristen for suggesting the quiz!


*NEW* website: PhysQuiz.net!

I’ve spent most of the past two months writing new quizzes for a brand new sibling site – PhysQuiz.net! There are a total of thirty-one free practice quizzes in a wide range of categories:

  • Science Fundamentals
  • Kinematics (position & motion)
  • Dynamics (forces, momentum & energy)
  • Circular Motion and Gravitation
  • Electricity and Magnetism
  • Waves & Optics
  • Thermodynamics
  • Modern Physics

PhysQuiz.net uses the same Dashboard as ChemQuiz.net, so you’ll still have the ability to create assignments with the settings you choose and collect quiz results from your students. You can fill out this short form to sign up for a free 30-day demo of the PhysQuiz.net Dashboard!

I tried to cover the topics that are found in a typical first-year algebra-based high school Physics course that align with the NGSS Performance Expectations, but I’m also planning to add quizzes this upcoming school year for fluids as well as more thermodynamics and modern physics. Our school brought back AP Physics 2 and I’m teaching it again, so I’m highly motivated to add those topics! I also want to add more diagrams and graphs to the quizzes, because I learned a lot about scalable vector graphics (SVGs) while writing the Vector Calculations and Motion Graphs quizzes, and I’m really happy with how they turned out.

a dynamically generated motion graph from PhysQuiz.net
a dynamically generated motion graph from PhysQuiz.net

Just like ChemQuiz.net, a full site license for the PhysQuiz.net Dashboard is US$50 per school year, and I offer discounts for multiple secondary schools within the same district or multiple instructions within the same college or university. If you also subscribe to the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard, you’ll get a 50% discount so that PhysQuiz.net is only US$25 per school year! Current subscribers can use Square to purchase an add-on license here, or you can purchase licenses for both sites here. I can also accept payment through a variety of other methods, including school purchase orders, so please reach out if you want to get that process started or have any questions.

I want PhysQuiz.net to be useful to as many teachers and students as possible, so if you teach at a high poverty public high school or school district with at least 50% of your students on free/reduced lunch or labeled “economically disadvantaged”, you qualify for a free site license! Just fill out the PhysQuiz.net Dashboard interest form and include a link to your school’s demographic information. I’ll also be running a separate monthly newsletter for PhysQuiz.net, so if you’re interested in news and updates about the site, please fill out this short form or send me an email at chris@physquiz.net to sign up!


More powerful web hosting for ChemQuiz.net

In mid-July, I migrated ChemQuiz.net to a new web hosting company (Scalahosting, for those who are interested) and upgraded to a “virtual private server” that gives ChemQuiz.net way more speed and power than it ever had before! As the site has become more popular, it was obvious that it had outgrown its humble beginnings and needed more resources.

For example, this past school year (July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023), 9038 students from 118 schools completed 2393 different assignments given by 143 different teachers for a total of 152,668 quiz results. To put it in perspective, that’s seven times as many quiz results as the previous school year, and that only counts students who completed assignments through the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard!

If you were using ChemQuiz.net with your students this summer during the week of the site migration, I really appreciate your patience as I did my best to work out some of the weird, unforeseen issues that popped up as a result of the move. I believe it’s going to put the site in a much better position to keep providing practice quizzes to science teachers and their students all over the world!


New quiz features & bug fixes

In between writing 22 new physics quizzes 😅 and migrating the entire website 😵‍💫, I was able to add some new features to ChemQuiz.net and also fix some bugs:

Dashboard – these features and bug fixes also apply to PhysQuiz.net

  • added a “last access” parameter in the Dashboard so teachers can see when students last used the site
  • added the ability for teachers to use preview, printable and presentation modes on exemplar assignments
  • fixed a bug where preview links were broken on the Assignments page
  • fixed a bug where sharing an assignment with a colleague would exclude specific quiz options (thanks, Helen!)
  • fixed a nasty bug where custom assignment names, instructions to students and notes were truncated whenever apostrophes or quotation marks were used
  • fixed a bug on the Grades page where the chosen class was “forgotten” when clicking the “Next>>” button (thanks, Don!)
  • fixed a bug where class status (e.g. “Active” or “Inactive”) wasn’t showing up on the Classes page
  • fixed a bug where selecting “lock after close” for an assignment that had no closing date would prevent students from taking the assignment
  • fixed several other minor appearance and user experience bugs

All Quizzes

  • sometimes when a student entered a number in scientific notation incorrectly, the quiz would show their entry as “1f x 10”, so now it shows what they entered without attempting to reformat it (thanks, Mary Ann!)
  • teacher instructions in some assignments were incorrectly triggering a false positive in the site’s security software (thanks, Don!)
  • added “(where applicable)” to solution setup directions for some quizzes

Acid-Base Equilibrium Quiz

  • pH was incorrectly calculated as 14 when given a concentration and % ionization in certain situations involving bases  (thanks, Mary Ann!)

Calorimetry Quiz

  • option to show solution setups wasn’t activated (oops!)
  • exemplar assignments were not displaying selected options in the Dashboard

Nuclear Reactions Quiz

  • positron decays with additional products were generating too many nuclides
  • exemplar assignments were not displaying selected options in the Dashboard

Stoichiometry & Limiting Reagents Quiz

  • added an option to show molar masses in questions (thanks, Monica and Malcolm!)

Thermochemical Equations Quiz

  • added an option to show molar masses in questions (thanks again, Monica and Malcolm!)

Other bug fixes

  • Persistent Login WordPress plugin broke the Google login button and slowed down the site (thanks, Don!)
  • student registration form wasn’t interpreting school expiration dates correctly (thanks, Mary Ann!)
  • other “under the hood” improvements

I keep track of every bug or issue that gets reported as well as every new quiz suggestion that’s sent in, so I’m going to continue to do my best to address those throughout the school year. ChemQuiz.net has improved significantly over the past three years thanks to the bug reports and suggestions sent in by teachers and students alike, so please keep sending them in!


Site licenses for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard

Thank you to everyone who has already renewed or purchased a new school’s site license for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard for the 2023-2024 school year! Site licenses are how I pay for the web hosting and the software I use to write the quizzes, and it keeps the website ad-free. Back in the spring, I sent out invoices for this upcoming school year to everyone who had previously purchased a site license, but if you didn’t receive one, please let me know.

Site licenses for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard from the 2022-2023 school year expired on July 1st, which means that teachers at those schools won’t be able to create new student accounts, classes or assignments. If you plan on renewing for the upcoming school year but need a little extra time for paperwork to go through your local bureaucracy, just drop me a line and I’ll extend your school’s expiration date to September 1st.

If you’d like to purchase a ChemQuiz.net site license for the 2023-2024 school year for just US$50, you can pay through a school purchase order or personal check, or via CashApp, PayPal, Venmo or Zelle at chris@chemquiz.net, or by credit card through Square. Remember, you can also bundle a license for the PhysQuiz.net Dashboard for just US$25 more! Please contact me if you have any questions about site licenses or how to purchase one.

I am fully committed to expanding access to STEM education for students in communities that lack the traditional resources to be successful, so if you teach in a high poverty public school or school district (at least 50% of your students on free/reduced lunch or designated “economically disadvantaged”), please 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!

  • Follow @ChemQuizDotNet on The Site Formerly Known as Twitter, on The Site Still Known as Facebook and on Threads and share my updates with your fellow Chemistry teachers!
  • Tell another Chemistry teacher about ChemQuiz.net and encourage them to try out the Dashboard!
  • Add your school to the list of supporters on the About page! Go to the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard, click on “Your Info” in the top menu bar, check the box next to “Display School on ChemQuiz.net“, and click the “Update Your Info” button.

This upcoming week, my wife and I are traveling to the Green Mountains of Vermont to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary! We’ve never been to Vermont before, so we’re really looking forward to making the trip before school starts the following week. Maybe we’ll run into Bernie Sanders while we’re there?

Thanks so much for your support over the past three years! Please feel free to get in touch with me via the Contact form or at chris@chemquiz.net if you have any questions, comments, or concerns. Here’s hoping that this upcoming school year is the best one we’ve had in a long time – we could all use it!

-Chris

Categories
News

June 2023: site license renewal, PhysQuiz.net, and more!

Hello again! For those of you in the United States and everywhere else that’s almost done with this school year, I hope that everything is wrapping up nicely for each of you. This was my 25th year in education, and it continues to amaze me how each year can be so different from the last.

In this newsletter, I’ve included important information about the following topics:

  • Site license renewals due July 1st
  • Summer site maintenance
  • Coming in Fall 2023 – PhysQuiz.net!
  • New quiz features & bug fixes

Site license renewals due July 1st

Thank you to everyone who has already renewed their school’s site license for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard for the 2023-2024 school year! Site licenses are how I pay for the web hosting and the software I use to write the quizzes, and it keeps the website ad-free. (I understand their purpose, but I’ve always hated web ads.) I’ve sent out invoices for next school year to everyone with a current site license, but if you didn’t receive one, please let me know.

If you take no action, current site licenses for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard will expire on July 1st, after which you won’t be able to create student accounts, classes or assignments. If you plan on renewing for next school year but you need a little extra time for the paperwork to go through, just drop me a line and I’ll extend your school’s expiration date to September 1st. I’ve taught in three public school districts over my career and each handled purchase orders differently – and they were all in Ohio! – so I understand how convoluted the process can be.

If you currently have a demo account and would like to purchase a site license for the 2023-2024 school year for just US$50, you can pay through a school purchase order or personal check, or via CashApp, PayPal, Venmo or Zelle at chris@chemquiz.net, or by credit card through Square. Please reach out if you have any questions at all about site licenses or how to purchase one!

Site licenses also help me offer the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard for free to public schools in the U.S. with high rates of poverty. I’ve seen firsthand how schools with limited resources have to scrape and scrounge just to be able to teach their subjects (my school just got new Chemistry textbooks for the first time in 21 years, and I’ve personally repaired one-quarter of the desks in our two chem rooms). If ChemQuiz.net can do anything to help a student pass Chemistry in high school, then I figure they’re more likely to go to college and possibly major in science. Who knows! There’s no question our country needs more science literacy.

So far, the free site licenses program has been a success – 96 public schools have taken advantage of this offer, creating 2,500 student accounts and 676 assignments this school year, which have resulted in over 26,000 completed assignments. If you teach in a high poverty public school or school district (at least 50% of your students on free/reduced lunch or designated “economically disadvantaged”), please send me a link to the supporting documentation and you’ll get a free site license for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard forever.


Coming in Fall 2023 – PhysQuiz.net!

Last spring, I planned to spend my spare time during the upcoming school year writing physics practice quizzes for a new website: PhysQuiz.net! I figured I’d be able to “coast” on all of the existing Environmental Science and AP Physics 2 materials I’d developed over the years. Then, two of my science colleagues suddenly resigned – including our department chair – and everything got turned upside down. This ended up being a much more challenging school year than I had expected.

Fortunately, I’ll be teaching physics and computer science next year, so I’ll be able to focus on writing those physics practice quizzes that I meant to get to last year! Also, I’ll have a student helping me who’s going to major in computer science; she’s been learning coding with me since she was in the Kent Girl Coders Club as an 8th grader. The plan is that she’ll help me write physics quizzes this summer so she can develop a portfolio of work for her college applications. Everyone wins!

If you’re interested in news and updates about PhysQuiz.net, please fill out this short form or send me an email at chris@physquiz.net. Once the site is up and running, PhysQuiz.net site licenses will be available at a bundled discount for schools that have already purchased a site license for ChemQuiz.net. More details will be available as we make progress on the new website!


Summer site maintenance

Each year, ChemQuiz.net has continued to add more schools with more students who generate more quiz results, so it’s necessary to archive older material to keep the website’s database running efficiently. For example, there are currently 158,000 quiz results in one database table just from the past two years! 😱

I’m going to be performing the following maintenance items over the summer, starting on or shortly after July 1st:

  • All students accounts, assignments, quiz results, and classes created during the 2022-2023 school year (7/1/22 – 6/30/23) will be archived (but not deleted)
  • All student accounts created during the 2021-2022 school year will be deleted

Items that are archived will still be accessible to you through the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard. If you don’t want me to archive your stuff, or if you operate on a different school calendar, please let me know before July 1st! Also, I back up everything regularly, so I can always restore anything you might need.


New quiz features & bug fixes

Like many of you, I’ve been especially “teacher tired” this spring! I feel like I’ve had to work harder than ever to keep my students focused and motivated after Spring Break, but they’ve been good sports about it (mostly). As a result, I wasn’t able to find time to write any new quizzes, but I did fix some bugs and add a few new features that I thought would be helpful:

Dashboard

  • changed demo account to 30 days with no limit on creating student accounts or assignments
  • added the ability to share (create a copy of) an assignment with a colleague at the same school (thanks, Helen!)
  • added the ability to quickly restore (unarchive) an assignment from the Assignments page
  • apostrophes in text would break “Notes to student” when creating an assignment

All Quizzes

  • added the option to not display solution setups after students completed a quiz (thanks, Susan!)

Acid-Base Neutralization Quiz

  • answers and problem setups were wrong for problems with multiple hydroxide bases (thanks, Scott & Susan!)

Chemical Equilibrium Quiz

  • pressures should use parentheses instead of square brackets in word problems (thanks, Susan!)

Concentrations of Solutions Quiz

  • dilution problems sometimes had the same before & after volume or an increase in concentration (thanks, Malcolm!)

Gas Laws Quiz

  • correct answers marked as wrong when using “simplified” given values (thanks to my own students for reporting this bug!)
  • before & after were sometimes the same when using “simplified” given values
  • gas temperatures were often below 200K, which is unlikely

Kinetics & Rate Laws Quiz

  • rate constant units were incorrect on some problems involving change in concentration over time (thanks, Debra!)
  • rate law answers were being interpreted as scientific notation due to ^ character (thanks, Susan!)
  • table header showed “Concentration” instead of “Amount” for problems with moles (thanks again, Susan!)

Stoichiometry & Limiting Reagents Quiz

  • answers correctly rounded to the hundredths place were sometimes being marked wrong (thanks, Caitlyn!)

I keep a list of every bug or issue that gets reported as well as every new quiz suggestion, so my plan is to address those once our summer break starts next week. ChemQuiz.net has improved significantly over the past three years thanks to the bug reports and suggestions sent in by teachers and students alike, so please keep sending them in!


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!

  • Follow @ChemQuizDotNet on Twitter and Facebook and share my updates with your fellow Chemistry teachers!
  • Tell another Chemistry teacher about ChemQuiz.net and encourage them to try out the Dashboard!
  • Opt-in to adding your school to the list of supporters on the About ChemQuiz.net page! Go to the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard, click on “Your Info” in the top menu bar, check the box next to “Display School on ChemQuiz.net“, and click the “Update Your Info” button.

We only have one more week for semester exams at my school, and then I get to take our Environmental Club to the Ohio Envirothon Competition for the third year in a row! This year’s state competition takes place at Defiance College in Defiance, Ohio, which I’ve driven past but never been to, so I’m looking forward to seeing some new places. If you’re in the U.S. and your state participates in the Envirothon competition, I highly recommend getting involved! In Ohio, the competition is run through our Soil & Water Conservation Districts, so contacting your county’s district may be a good place to start. The kids really learn a lot about regional environmental issues that they don’t normally see in class, and it can be a lot of fun!

Thanks again for all of your support, suggestions and feedback over the past three years! Working on ChemQuiz.net and collaborating with teachers all over the globe has been a deeply fulfilling experience. Please get in touch with me via the Contact form or at chris@chemquiz.net if you have any questions, comments, or concerns. If you’re in the United States, I hope you have a restful and peaceful Memorial Day. Take care, stay safe, and enjoy your summer break!

-Chris

Categories
News

April 2023: new kinetics & rate laws quiz and more!

Happy April, everyone! I hope you’re all hanging in there and can see the light at the end of the tunnel. We just finished Spring Break in my district, and it felt great to get a week off to clear my head and wrap up the improvements to ChemQuiz.net I’ve been working on, which I’ve been looking forward to sharing with you.


NEW Kinetics & Rate Laws Quiz

  • determine average and instantaneous reaction rates from a variety of dynamically generated data sets
  • write rate laws and determine reaction rate constants
  • calculate reaction half-life and changes in concentration over time
  • aligns with Next Generation Science Standards Performance Expectation HS-PS1-5: Matter and its Interactions

Thanks to everyone who helped out with resources to help me write this quiz! Right now it uses generic chemical equations (e.g., A + B → C + D), but I’m planning on adding reaction rate constants for real chemical reactions once I’ve scrounged up enough of them to generate enough random questions without repeating. If you have a list of reaction rate constants and are willing to share it with me, please contact me – I’d love to get a copy!


NEW Solution setups for all quizzes involving calculations

Stoichiometry & Limiting Reagents Quiz example problem setupFor almost two years now, I’ve wanted to add problem setups for the quizzes that involve calculations, because I’ve personally found that I can learn a mathematical concept a lot faster if I can see how a problem is worked out step by step, so I figured other students would benefit from that feature as well. I wanted to start with the Stoichiometry & Limiting Reagents Quiz because, as I’m sure you know, the conversions can be tricky to visualize for many students. I first tried LaTeX, which is clunky but powerful and has been around forever, but despite my best efforts, I just couldn’t get integrate it consistently with WordPress.

Fortunately, when version 109 was released in January, Google Chrome finally began supporting a mathematical markup language called MathML which is much, much easier to use and integrate into a website like ChemQuiz.net. I started adding problem setups to quizzes in mid-February and finished about three weeks later (I documented the whole process on Twitter with screenshots, if you’re interested). Some of the problem setups were pretty complicated, like this one, which shows the process for solving for the quantity of a substance at equilibrium in the Chemical Equilibrium Quiz:

Chemical Equilibrium Quiz example problem setupI hope the problem setups are helpful for you and your students! One caveat: some schools (like mine, for example) keep their ChromeOS devices on the “Long-Term Support” update channel, which lags about six months behind the most recent version. This means that if your students use school-supplied Chrome devices, they may not be able to view the problem setups until July, when Chrome version 109 with MathML support should push out to those devices. I apologize for this temporary inconvenience, but it shouldn’t be long until this feature is available to everyone!


Quiz alignments with Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)

I’ve taught science in Ohio for my entire career, and I’ve been evaluated many times, but a relatively new feature of our state’s teacher evaluations is the use of “High Quality Student Data”, or HQSD. For math and English/language arts courses, there are lots of opportunities to collect this data through standardized tests and big name vendors, but for high school science courses like Chemistry, it can be a more time-consuming process.

One of the primary goals of ChemQuiz.net has been to make things easier on everyone – on students trying to learn a new concept, and on teachers trying to focus their energy on helping their students. To that end, I put together an alignment document between the quizzes on ChemQuiz.net and the Performance Expectations of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). For those of you who need to document your usage of standards in your lesson plans, I hope this will make it a little easier and save you some time.

For states that haven’t adopted NGSS, I plan on making more alignment documents this summer, starting with my own state and then focusing on the states that have the most ChemQuiz.net Dashboard subscribers. Eventually I’d like to add standards-based quiz results so that every teacher with a Dashboard account can analyze and download student growth data with minimal extra effort on their part. If you have any thoughts or documentation on your own state standards, please feel free to share them with me!


New quiz features & bug fixes

While I do my best to keep ChemQuiz.net bug-free, it’s inevitable that some will creep into the thousands of lines of code that make up the site. Since I didn’t send out a March newsletter, this list is a bit longer than usual, especially since I had to update the code for so many quizzes to add the problem setups and figured I might as well fix some bugs while I was digging around in there! Here’s a list of the most recent improvements and fixes to ChemQuiz.net:

Dashboard

  • “show individual students” link wasn’t working on “Edit Assignment” form (thanks, Kelly!)
  • open/close date was wiped out when saving quiz-specific options (thanks again, Kelly!)
  • made “Quiz is active” checkbox more obvious

Acid-Base Equilibrium Quiz

  • 15 weak bases were incorrectly listed as acids in the database (thanks, Mary Ann!)

Acid-Base Neutralization Quiz

  • acids & bases selected for the quiz weren’t very random

Average Atomic Masses Quiz

  • “Load More Problems Like This!” button would crash the quiz

Calorimetry Quiz

  • “challenging” word problems were asking for mass even if moles were wanted (thanks, Susan!)

Chemical Equilibrium Quiz

  • chemical equilibrium problem wording had multiple issues (thanks again, Mary Ann!)
  • quiz would sometimes crash when generating a lot of problems (>10)

Concentrations of Solutions Quiz

  • mercury(I) compounds were producing incorrect ions (thanks again, Mary Ann!)
  • chemicals selected for solubility quiz weren’t being shuffled properly

Density Quiz

  • added an option to use rho (ρ) for density

Hess’s Law Quiz

  • some reactions weren’t adding up correctly (thanks again, Mary Ann!)
  • entering “0” as a correct answer was being interpreted as “no answer” (thanks again, Susan!)

Lewis Dot Structures Quiz

  • generated questions weren’t very random, so I added an array that keeps track of questions that have already been displayed to avoid repeats (thanks, Cynthia!)

Molar Conversions Quiz

  • improved question layout

Molecular Geometry & VSEPR Quiz

  • grades page is showing incorrect images for valence electrons & domain questions (thanks, Clare!)

Naming Compounds & Calculating Molar Masses Quiz

  • added units to presentation mode

Nuclear Reactions Quiz

  • “B” was being interpreted as a beta particle instead of boron (thanks, Scott!)
  • added 3,361 nuclear decay processes
  • fixed a bug that was producing blank problems

Periodic Trends Quiz

  • added ion charge to ionic radius questions (thanks, Mike!)

SI Conversions Quiz

  • updated prefix for deca- to be “da-” instead of “D-” (thanks, Dorothy!)

Stoichiometry & Limiting Reagents Quiz

  • added an option to exclude 1:1 mole ratios (thanks, Drew!)

Thermochemical Equations Quiz

  • correct answers were being marked as wrong if rounding due to sig figs was greater than 1% of the calculated answer (thanks again, Scott!)

As always, my sincere thanks go out to everyone who sent in a suggestion or bug report! If at any time you come across anything that isn’t working correctly, or you come up with an idea for a new feature or quiz, please let me know by filling out the Contact form or emailing me directly at chris@chemquiz.net. Your feedback makes ChemQuiz.net better!


Looking ahead to the 2023-2024 school year

It’s renewal time! In the next few weeks, I’m going to start sending out invoices for site licenses for the 2023-2024 school year. This time, I’m going to try generating invoices using the most recent payment method; for example, if you purchased a site license with Square, you’ll get an invoice through Square. If you purchased a site license through a school purchase order, I’ll email you an invoice directly.

You can purchase a site license now for the 2023-2024 school year for the same price of $US50 through school purchase order or personal check (US only), or via CashApp, PayPal, Venmo or Zelle at chris@chemquiz.net, or you can pay with a credit card through Square. Site licenses help me to pay for web hosting and the software I use to create the site, and they enable me to focus my time outside of school on fixing bugs, adding features and writing new quizzes. I truly appreciate your support!

I understand that situations can change from school year to school year, so if you’ve decided not to renew your ChemQuiz.net Dashboard site license for next school year, just let me know and I’ll make sure you don’t receive an invoice or any reminders. The last thing I want to do is pester a fellow educator.


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!

  • Follow @ChemQuizDotNet on Twitter and Facebook and share my updates with your fellow Chemistry teachers!
  • Tell another Chemistry teacher about ChemQuiz.net and encourage them to try out the Dashboard!
  • Opt-in to adding your school to the list of supporters on the About ChemQuiz.net page by going to the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard, click on “Your Info” in the top menu bar, check the box next to “Display School on ChemQuiz.net“, and click the “Update Your Info” button.

10 million visits!

On March 22nd, ChemQuiz.net registered its 10 millionth visit since I started the site in the summer of 2020:

It’s a challenge for me to express the deep gratitude I feel toward everyone who helped make this milestone happen, so I’ll keep it simple – from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Once Spring Break is over, it always feels like we’re in the home stretch for the school year. I’m currently wrapping up my 25th year in public education – a quarter-century! 😱 – and it still amazes me how quickly this time of the year passes. Good luck to any of your students taking the AP Chemistry or IB Chemistry exams! Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me via the Contact form or at chris@chemquiz.net.

Categories
News

February 2023: Discounted site license, progress on kinetics quiz

Hello again! I hope you’re doing well now that we’re over halfway through the school year. I apologize for sending this month’s newsletter later than I would have liked, but I wanted to get the new Kinetics & Rate Laws Quiz to a point where it was usable and I could share it with you. Unfortunately, that took longer than I expected! It turns out that rate laws are really complicated – who knew? 😂


Discounted site license

Now only US$30 through July 1, 2023!

If you haven’t purchased a site license for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard, you’re missing out on the ability to create assignments and keep track of student progress for each of the 35 quizzes available on the site! Even though we’re past the halfway point of the school year, there are still some challenging, two-letter Chemistry exams looming on the horizon (you know which ones I’m talking about).

Because of this, I wanted to offer a 40% discount – only US$30! – through July 1st, which should cover the rest of this school year. In addition to being able to create your own assignments for each quiz based on options that you choose, you also get access to “Presentation mode”, which lets you put quizzes up on your projector or interactive whiteboard so you can work on them together as a class. We did this in my own classes last week to review balancing equations:

Screenshot from the Balancing, Identifying & Predicting Chemical Equations Quiz

You can try out Presentation mode on the Significant Figures Quiz to see if it would be useful for you and your classes.

Site licenses help me pay for web hosting and the software I use to write the quizzes, and I’ve been able to focus more time on writing quizzes by letting go of coaching and other supplementals where I teach. If you’re interested in purchasing a discounted site license, I can accept payment through school purchase order or personal check, or via CashApp, PayPal, Venmo or Zelle at chris@chemquiz.net, or you can pay with a credit card through Square. Please reach out to me if you have any questions at all!


New Kinetics & Rate Laws Quiz mostly done

Thanks to the help of the numerous teachers who sent me suggestions and resources after the last newsletter, I’ve made significant progress on making a new Kinetics & Rate Laws Quiz! Right now, it can generate problems for reaction rates, rate laws, and the change of concentration over time using generic “A + B → C + D” equations. I’d really appreciate it if you could take a moment to check it out and give me some feedback, especially on the validity of the randomly-generated numbers.

As I mentioned before, I wanted to send out the February newsletter last weekend, but I wanted something functional to share, and I was struggling with getting the quiz to calculate correct answers from the problems. This prevents students from just looking at the HTML source code to try to find the answer, something I figured out early on when I wrote my first practice quizzes for my blog over a decade ago. I wanted to add half-life problems when given data tables, but the randomly generated numbers are still coming out weird. After I fix that, I want to go back and add real chemical equations before I officially publish the quiz.

Thanks again to Susan, Terrie, Matt, Mark and Caytee for your generosity – I greatly appreciate it!


New quiz features & bug fixes

I hear from teachers and students all the time about suggestions for improving quizzes and about bugs on ChemQuiz.net that I didn’t know about, and it’s great! Since I teach full time, it’s difficult for me to find the time and mental energy to think of improvements and find all the bugs on my own during the school year, so I rely on feedback from everyone who uses the site. Here’s a rundown of the most recent improvements:

Dashboard

  • assignments assigned to “All Classes” weren’t showing up for individual classes in the filter on the Grades page (thanks David and Danny!)

All Quizzes

  • “silicate” compounds are vague across quizzes so I made them all explicitly “orthosilicate” in the database (thanks, Susan!)
  • additional “under the hood” improvements

Acid-Base Equilibrium Quiz

  • answers weren’t rounding or displaying the proper units

Balancing, Identifying & Predicting Chemical Equations Quiz

  • added an option to use chemical names instead of formulas (thanks, Sylvie and Anamar!)
  • added a database setting for some products that are too hard to reliably predict (e.g., CO in combustion reactions) (thanks, David!)
  • added tooltip hover boxes for chemical names on the score page

Electron Configuration Quiz

  • added an option to limit problems to the first 20 elements (thanks, Jason!)

Molecular Geometry & VSEPR Quiz

  • valence electrons weren’t being counted correctly for ions 🤦🏻‍♂️ (thanks, Tony!)

Naming Compounds & Calculating Molar Masses Quiz

  • now accepts compound names without a space before the roman numeral (pointed out by my students)

Scientific Notation Quiz

  • numbers weren’t being stored properly in hidden input when converting from scientific notation (thanks, Lucas!)

SI Conversions Quiz

  • guesses of a large order of magnitude (10^10 or greater) weren’t being handled properly (thanks, Mary Ann!)

Thanks again to everyone who sent in a suggestion or bug report! There are still several that I need to address but I haven’t been able to yet because I’ve been working on the new kinetics quiz, so I appreciate your patience. If you come across anything that isn’t working correctly or you come up with an idea for a new feature or quiz, please let me know by filling out the Contact form or emailing me directly at chris@chemquiz.net!


Free site licenses for eligible schools

When I first launched ChemQuiz.net in the summer of 2020, I wanted the site to be useful to as many students and teachers as possible. This is the reason the quizzes are all free to use, including all of their options. Since I’ve taught at a high-poverty school, I know how difficult it can be to get the necessary resources for science classes. At my previous school, we used to have our science students do a big fundraiser each fall just so we could buy equipment and supplies!

I also made the decision to give free site licenses for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard to those schools, and I’ve been really happy with the results so far, so I wanted to share some statistics about the program from this school year:

  • 84 high schools across the United States have received free site licenses
  • 2,410 students from those schools have active Dashboard accounts
  • teachers from those schools have created 295 assignments
  • students have completed assignments 20,482 times (as of the evening of Super Bowl Sunday)

These numbers are only possible thanks to the schools and individuals who’ve purchased site licenses, so THANK YOU for your continued support of ChemQuiz.net! My dream is to someday get an email from a student who just completed their undergrad Chemistry degree and used the site back in high school to get better at chemistry – that would be really, really cool!


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!

  • Follow @ChemQuizDotNet on Twitter and Facebook and share my updates with your fellow Chemistry teachers!
  • Tell another Chemistry teacher about ChemQuiz.net and encourage them to try out the Dashboard!
  • Add your school to the list of supporters on the About page by going to the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard, click on “Your Info” in the top menu bar, check the box next to “Display School on ChemQuiz.net“, and click the “Update Your Info” button.

Thanks again for your continued support and kind words about ChemQuiz.net! Please feel free to contact me any time if you have any questions or suggestions for improvement, or if you run into any problems while using the site. Good luck with the rest of this school year!

-Chris