Re: [Phys-L] show the checks

[Jeff Bigler <jcb@mit.edu>]

On 10/16/2012 4:40 PM, Arlyn DeBruyckere wrote:
> This has been ignored for a few days but jumped to the front of my
> attention today as I got an e-mail from a company that claimed it had
> software that could grade tests, including essay tests at a rate of over
> 60 per minute. With the increased pressure on my time a program like
> that is very tempting but I can't imagine a computer program that can do
> a scoring scheme that Dr. Denker outlines here.
>
> As I think of my physics tests I think I am following this rather well.
> I have a beginning section that has students identify links (in chart
> form) between the quantity, symbol used in equations, the metric unit
> and if the quantity is vector or scalar in nature. All of the problems,
> even the conceptual (without numbers) ones are multiple points where
> students are required to make a "variable list" and an equation list
> that counts for half of the points. Even a "correct" answer without
> these gets at most half the points. Students continue to push against
> this. Today I used the first part of Dr. Denker's e-mail in class to
> reinforce this point. I hope he doesn't mind.

I do something similar.  I have created a set of physics reference
tables, cobbled together from the NY Regents tables, the AP formula
sheet, and other data that I've gathered and that my students use
throughout the year.  (The tables are available at
<http://www.mrbigler.com/documents/Physics_Reference_Tables.doc> if
you're curious.  I'm sure there are some mistakes and typos in them.)

At the beginning of the year, I hand out the reference tables and give
my students an assignment of carefully selected problems that use the
formulas in the tables.  (At this point, all of the formulas and topics
are still unfamiliar.)  I teach them to use the units and other clues to
figure out which variables are in the problem, to find a formula that
relates the variables, and then to substitute the variables and solve
the problems.

The students who work sequentially from start to finish usually have an
easy time showing an appropriate level of detail in their work.  The
students who work more intuitively have a lot of trouble documenting as
they go, because their brains take them to the answer before they do
anything else.  For those students, I teach them that when they get to
the answer, they're not finished yet; they still have to write down
something akin to a proof of why their answer is correct.

I've found that this does a great job of setting up some of the
problem-solving skills that they need, as well as setting their
expectations about what's required to document the solution to a problem.

-- 
Jeff Bigler
Lynn English HS; Lynn, MA, USA
"Magic" is what we call Science before we understand it.