Assessing Scientific Practices in Physics Paper-based Assessments

Abstract

Calls to transform introductory college physics courses to include scientific practices require assessments that can measure the extent to which these transformations are effective. Such assessments should be able to measure students' abilities to blend conceptually important concepts with practices scientists engage in. To design assessment tasks that can measure these abilities, we leveraged Evidence-Centered Design and the Three-Dimensional Learning Assessment Protocol with the focal scientific practice of "Using Mathematics." We conducted video recorded one-on-one think-aloud interviews to explore how students interpreted these tasks. In this paper, we articulate our design process and the analysis of students' responses using the ACER (Activation-Construction-Execution-Reflection) framework. Our assessment tasks elicited students' abilities to blend concepts with mathematics and written solutions elicited evidence of their abilities to blend them most of the time. This work extends our understanding on incorporating scientific practices into paper-based assessments at the introductory level.