Buggie Emerges from "Academic Cave," Rejoining A2 World

[buggie@ben14.unm.edu (stephen e buggie)]

January 10, 2000                                           buggie@unm.edu


                        BUGGIE'S RETURN TO APPLEDOM


Dear Apple II readers,

       I'm back!  Since September 10th, I've been away from e-mail to
work on a large, 475 page writing project: a test bank for a college
textbook.  I decided to back off from e-mail and from hardware tinkering
because those are the only activities I have that are optional.  Both
consume huge amounts of time, and that will now resume.

       Besides replying to long-overdue e-mail, there are Apple items to
ship out.  I will get down to this and hopefully will be caught up by
Ground
Hog day.  I also have not done any hardware hacking since September and it
will be good to smell the solder once again.

       To those who have waited so long, at least I can say that the
checks
you have sent will not be deposited until the items are shipped.

       The last time I did a similar writing project was 1995, so it is
unlikely that it will happen again soon.  Its hard to turn down the
opportunity to earn such easy money, but also, since I am the
second-highest
ranked faculty member at the branch campus, I'm expected to do projects
like
this occasionally.

       100% of the writing was done on Apple II: My flagship Rom 3 IIgs,
My
flagship accelerated IIe at college, and a IIC Plus that I hauled with me
on various short trips or to the back yard during the fall.  After all the
writing was finished, the Mac SE translated the files to Mac ASCII and
also
to IBM/PC ASCII.

       A "test bank" is a huge collection of test items, mostly multiple-
choice, that is given to college teachers who adopt a
textbook.  Publishers
hire a separate author for the test bank because it is painstaking work
and
the textbook author is discouraged from burning himself out doing it.  The
test bank, if good and extensive, is a major selling point for the book.
These test banks are provided for most textbooks.  The professor spins the
questions from disk to paper, adding original questions to the test based
on
lectures, videos, field trips.

       The preface at the start of the book is reprinted below.  Regards,
Steve Buggie


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                  TEST BANK TO ACCOMPANY PAUL KAPLAN'S
   A CHILD'S ODYSSEY: CHILD AND ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT, THIRD EDITION
                         Wadsworth Publishing Co.

                             Stephen Buggie
                    University of New Mexico, Gallup

                              February 2000


                                 PREFACE

         The test bank has been completely revised for Paul Kaplan's A
Child's Odyssey, Third Edition.  There are 3777 questions on 475 pages,
of which eighty-two percent are multiple choice, nine percent are
fill-in, and nine percent are essays.  Eighty-seven percent of the
multiple-choice items are entirely new for the Third Edition, eight
percent have been continued from the 1991 Second Edition test bank, and
five percent are repeated from the Third Edition's updated Study Guide,
authored by Michael L. Jaffe of Kean University (NJ).  Computerized disk
versions of the test bank are available to faculty on either IBM or
Macintosh disks by request from Wadsworth representatives.

         A new feature for the Tbe avoided by selecting the items manually
from the disk.

         Faculty users are welcome to edit the items to suit their
needs.  The software allows the items to be written to disk as an
unformatted ASCII text file so that the file can then be imported into
any word processor for editing or for custom reformatting.  Customizing
the test by editing the individual items allows a greater proportion of
the items to be used, and this is encouraged.

         Your comments on the test bank are welcome.  They can be sent
to the test bank's editor, Annie Berterretche, who will forward them to
me.  My postal and e-mail addresses are given below.


                             ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

         I am indebted to those who contributed their time, effort, or
ideas to the test bank's completion.  Many are colleagues at the
University of New Mexico's Gallup campus.  Kathy Larason, Ron Cranston,
Carolyn Milligan, and Ram Das assisted with large file transfers, and
other computer or media support.  Helen Zongolowicz, my department
chair, allowed me to rearrange other duties to ensure the project's
timely completion.  Erlinda Torres provided secretarial support.  Tim
Gaines and Ralph Casebolt helped me to clarify my ideas on test-item
construction.  Annie Berterretche supervised the entire project from
Wadsworth's editorial office at Pacific Grove, California.  Minda Tayam
painstakingly proofread the entire manuscript and made many necessary
corrections.  Brian, Kevin, and Shauna Buggie assisted with data
tabulation.  Members of my family were exceptionally patient and
cooperative in scheduling our activities to accommodate my efforts on
the test bank.

Stephen E. Buggie
buggie@unm.edu
Professor of Psychology
University of New Mexico, Gallup
200 College Road
Gallup, NM  87301