Abstract
An earlier investigation found that the performance of advanced students in a quantum mechanics course did not automatically improve from midterm to final exam on identical problems even when they were provided the correct solutions and their own graded exams. Here, we describe a study, which extended over four years, in which upper-level undergraduate students in a quantum physics course were given four identical problems in both the midterm exam and final exam. Approximately half of the students were given explicit incentives to correct their mistakes in the midterm exam. In particular, they could get back up to 50\% of the points lost on each midterm exam problem. The solutions to the midterm exam problems were provided to all students in both groups but those who corrected their mistakes were provided the solution after they submitted their corrections to the instructor. The performance on the same problems on the final exam suggests that students who were given incentives to correct their mistakes significantly outperformed those who were not given an incentive. The incentive to correct the mistakes had greater impact on the final exam performance of students who had not performed well on the midterm exam.
Highlights
Helping students learn to think like a scientist is an important goal of most courses for science and engineering majors at all levels [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
An earlier investigation found that the performance of advanced students in a quantum mechanics course did not automatically improve from midterm to final exam on identical problems even when they were provided the correct solutions and their own graded exams
All students who had less than perfect score on the midterm exams took advantage of the incentive to correct their mistakes for course credit
Summary
Helping students learn to think like a scientist is an important goal of most courses for science and engineering majors at all levels [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. Meeting this goal is critical to prepare an additional one million STEM professionals in ten years according to the recommendations of the United States President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) report [9]. Students often do not reflect upon the problem solving process after solving problems in order to learn from them nor do they make an effort to learn from their mistakes after the graded problems are returned to them
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