The European Chemistry Thematic Network (ECTN) uses the Questionmark products for a large-scale European project on the evaluation of core competences in chemistry. At this moment ECTN consists of 90 chemistry departments of universities and colleges from 28 European countries. The network is being coordinated from the ''Ecole Supérieure de Chimie Physique Electronique de Lyon".

Dr. Pascal Mimero, computer-expert of the project group of the ECTN: "The project 'Evaluation of Core Chemistry' has actually sprung from our experiences with Erasmus exchange programmes for European students. We soon noticed that the success of these exchanges was largely depending on the shared basic competences in the studied field and on the ability to study the material in the language of the hosting institute. Already then were we thinking of a tool to collect and test these core competences."

'Evaluation of Core Chemistry' was to identify the core competences in organical and physical chemistry in the education systems of the 15 EU-member countries, and at the same time develop a multilingual tool to test these competences.

Pascal Mimero continues: "After having determined the core competences, we wanted to program a large question database ourselves to test each knowledge level. We soon realised that this was impossible because of our limited manpower. On the other hand, we especially wanted a lot of different question types, which none of the commercial products could offer us. But then we discovered Questionmark: a professional and very user-friendly testing package with a surprising number of different question types in a real multimedia environment. All of a sudden it seemed after all possible to realise our ambitions. And when we discovered the endless possibilities of Questionmark's question libraries, we were immediately sold.

Initially the project group developed a basic database with 1600 questions in English. These were organised in four libraries each containing about 400 questions. Each library covered exactly one knowledge level and competence field. The questions themselves were again organised by difficulty: from 'introductory', via 'intermediate' to 'advanced'. Mimero: "And that's exactly where the power of Questionmark becomes clear: because of the random selection of 30 questions from each library, we can generate an almost endless set of unique, but still equivalent tests, which gives an objective image of each test person's core competency for each of the four knowledge levels."

The project sparked off such enthusiasm that the European Union granted a prolongation to translate the basic database to French and German. "The fact that the Questionmark products are available in so many different languages naturally made our task a lot easier", thus Pascal Mimero, "Besides that, the cooperation with the Questionmark people was optimal: they put in a lot of know-how in the development of the tests and were always open for our suggestions. That's why we're now enlarging the question database with two new libraries for knowledge level 3: one for analytical and one for anorganical chemistry. It will in the long term contain a total of 2400 questions."

The ECTN-project group also developed a so-called 'Demonstrator': a smaller version of the basic database, containing 110 questions. From this database also, a random test of 30 questions each was compiled. The user can take the test in no more than 10 European languages, and the installation program can even add extra Greek or Central-European fonts.

An enthusiastic Mimero: "In the meantime the 'Demonstrator' already exists in 12 languages, and there are still two more under development. We now already have a Polish and a Czech version of the 'Demonstrator'. There are a lot of speculations and animated discussions about the particularities of the chemistry education in the different European countries. 'Evaluation of Core Chemistry' does in that way really contribute to an increase in our chemistry knowledge, the main objective of the European 'White Book'. And without Questionmark we would never have been able to accomplish this in such a short time span", thus again Mimero.

You can find more information on the project 'Evaluation of Core Chemistry' on the website: http://www.cpe.fr/ectn

A selection of interactive questions from the 'Core Chemistry'- database can be found at: http://teseo.unipg.it/ectn/

Questionmark was founded in the UK in 1988 and was one of the first software companies to provide an authoring framework to create tests and assessments to run on PCs. Today the company offers a full range of software for the testing and assessment marketplace spanning Windows 3.X and 95, DOS, Macintosh and web environments. Businesses, governments, and universities in over 40 countries now use Questionmark software.