Physics Exam Problems Reconsidered: Using Logger Pro to Evaluate Student Understanding of Physics

Abstract

In the past few decades, the physics teaching community has witnessed a surge in creative and often effective ways of using technology to improve physics instruction.1–3 Most of these findings suggest how technology can help instructors create interactive learning environments and how interactivity influences the effectiveness of physics learning.4 However, every physics teacher knows that in order for any teaching method to be effective, the exams have to test the skills and concepts addressed by the teacher. Exam content and style sends the clearest message to students about what skills and content are valued by instructors. The mismatch between what we intend to teach and what we effectively test in exams is of great concern to many science teachers. These were our motives for creating data-rich questions to be used in the exams in a large undergraduate first-year physics course at the University of British Columbia. These data-rich questions were developed to support the use of an innovative teaching pedagogy called Interactive Lecture Experiments.3