dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaProbing physics students' conceptual knowledge structures through term association
| Authors | Ian D. Beatty, William J. Gerace |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | physics/0508133 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0508133 |
| DOI | 10.1119/1.1482067 |
| Journal | American Journal of Physics 70(7), July 2002, 750-758 |
Abstract
Traditional tests are not effective tools for diagnosing the content and structure of students' knowledge of physics. As a possible alternative, a set of term-association tasks (the "ConMap" tasks) was developed to probe the interconnections within students' store of conceptual knowledge. The tasks have students respond spontaneously to a term or problem or topic area with a sequence of associated terms; the response terms and timeof- entry data are captured. The tasks were tried on introductory physics students, and preliminary investigations show that the tasks are capable of eliciting information about the stucture of their knowledge. Specifically, data gathered through the tasks is similar to that produced by a hand-drawn concept map task, has measures that correlate with inclass exam performance, and is sensitive to learning produced by topic coverage in class. Although the results are preliminary and only suggestive, the tasks warrant further study as student-knowledge assessment instruments and sources of experimental data for cognitive modeling efforts.
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"abstract": "Traditional tests are not effective tools for diagnosing the content and\nstructure of students\u0027 knowledge of physics. As a possible alternative, a set\nof term-association tasks (the \"ConMap\" tasks) was developed to probe the\ninterconnections within students\u0027 store of conceptual knowledge. The tasks have\nstudents respond spontaneously to a term or problem or topic area with a\nsequence of associated terms; the response terms and timeof- entry data are\ncaptured. The tasks were tried on introductory physics students, and\npreliminary investigations show that the tasks are capable of eliciting\ninformation about the stucture of their knowledge. Specifically, data gathered\nthrough the tasks is similar to that produced by a hand-drawn concept map task,\nhas measures that correlate with inclass exam performance, and is sensitive to\nlearning produced by topic coverage in class. Although the results are\npreliminary and only suggestive, the tasks warrant further study as\nstudent-knowledge assessment instruments and sources of experimental data for\ncognitive modeling efforts.",
"arxiv_id": "physics/0508133",
"authors": [
"Ian D. Beatty",
"William J. Gerace"
],
"categories": [
"physics.ed-ph"
],
"doi": "10.1119/1.1482067",
"journal_ref": "American Journal of Physics 70(7), July 2002, 750-758",
"title": "Probing physics students\u0027 conceptual knowledge structures through term association",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0508133"
},
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