A new approach to assessing physics students in NIE

Abstract

The main modes of assessing Physics undergraduates in the Physics division of the National Institute of Education are (a) continuous assessments and (b) end-of-semester examination. In general, the first mode contributes 20% and the second 80% to the final grade of the students. This paper shall discuss how (b) was modified in our attempt to promote deeper learning.

The basic idea of our approach is to set aside part of each examination question for the testing of analytical and thinking abilities of the students. We did this by constructing the questions such that these parts represented 'unfamiliar' situations to the students. In order to attempt these parts satisfactorily, the students would have to be able to correctly apply fundamental physics principles, rather than pure regurgitation of memorised ideas. The rest of each question were based mainly on lecture and tutorial work, so that a hard-working student, who had understood the basic ideas taught, can be expected to perform well.

Examinations using the above strategy were carried out for some physics modules. The results of these examinations were compared to those where the level of difficulty within each question remained fairly uniform. The comparison was based on the same group of students.