Assessment items are ideally designed to test the degree to which a student can successfully demonstrate the knowledge needed to complete a task and these assessment items often will have varying degrees of complexity.  Item complexity or the degree of difficulty of an item should translate into student performance on the item.  The ability to apply an objective complexity rating can be useful for predicting student performance.  A rubric for assigning a complexity rating was utilized to rate multiple choice organic chemistry tasks that were further investigated using novice and experienced students working these items on an eye-tracker. The results of these interviews and student-reported mental effort ratings provide richer information to instructors concerning how students solve organic chemistry multiple choice test questions.  This coupled with objective complexity ratings can help instructors gauge the difficulty of possible test questions.

Novice problem-solving of organic chemistry items

244th National Meeting (2012)

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