Title: |
Changing Distracters on
Questions of the Force Concept Inventory |
Meeting: |
129th AAPT National Meeting:
Sacramento, CA |
Location: |
Union Redwood |
Date: |
Wednesday, Aug. 4 |
Time: |
10:15 a.m. |
Author: |
N. Sanjay Rebello, Kansas
State Univ.
785-532-1539,
srebello@phys.ksu.edu |
Co-Author(s): |
Dean A. Zollman |
Abstract:
|
We report on a two-phase
study that investigated the effect of distracters on student performance
on selected Force Concept Inventory (FCI) questions. In the first phase
we presented students with four FCI questions in an open-ended format.
Students' open ended responses were categorized. In the second phase we
reverted to a multiple-choice format, but replaced the infrequently used
distracters on the original FCI questions with new distracters
constructed from the open-ended response categories in the first phase.
Our results indicate that changing the distracters may change the ideas
that students activate and transfer into the problem. Our results also
appear to imply that the effectiveness of distracters may change with
student population. The original FCI was a product of careful research
with a student population that may have been different from the students
in our research, thereby resulting in a different set of distracters.
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Footnotes:
|
None |
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