I'm a fairly new teacher; and I'm currently teaching Applied, General, Honors, and AP physics at the high school level. One thing I've observed regarding students' performance on tests is that they rely too much (or at least more than I would like) on their calculators. Lower level students will punch some numbers in, hit enter, and write down any answer that looks reasonable. Higher level students (particularly, AP students) can avoid writing down the steps of their solutions (and writing out the units and showing me their thought process) by letting their programmable calculators do most of the work.
I'm interested to hear the group's opinion on giving "no calculator" tests. These tests would still include difficult problems; however, the actual calculation pieces would work out so that the work could be done manually without too much additional time. Alternatively, solutions would be written in terms of fundamental units rather than numbers.
Also, if you have experience with these types of tests, do you have any advice on developing appropriate questions? Do any online sources exist for these?
Thanks,
Dan Folmar
Springfield H.S., Delaware County, PA
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