Development and use of a rubric to assess undergraduates’ problem solutions in Physics

Abstract

The aim of this study is to develop and apply a rubric to evaluate the solutions proposed for questions about electromagnetic induction belonging to university second year pre-service teachers. In this study which has pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design with control group, teaching of the topic of electromagnetic induction was applied to both groups with the same teaching method and a test consisting of four questions was applied before and after the teaching. 73 students in the experimental group were informed about the properties and usage of rubrics and asked to create a rubric. The effect of rubric on the success of students was examined by applying descriptive statistics and t-tests to the scores obtained from both tests. The validity and reliability of the scoring with rubric were analyzed by calculating the linear regression, t-test statistics, Pearson correlation, Intraclass correlation and Cronbach-alpha correlation coefficients. The results of the analyses show that the developed rubric was used consistently by the researcher and an independent coder and there was a high and significant (p=.000) relationship between the scores for all questions. In the inter-rater reliability analysis for each question, the lowest ICC coefficient was specified as .826. In light of the findings obtained from the study, it was concluded that the developed rubric helped to make consistent and stable ratings independent of the scorer, to determine the characteristics of the problem solutions and to increase the level of achievement of students. Another type of analytical rubric can be created and used for other topics of the area of Physics and the results can be compared with the findings of this study.