Enhancing traditional grading in introductory physics courses

Abstract

The evaluation in introductory physics courses follows a traditional approach where a letter grade, determined by the total score, is assigned to represent the student's overall performance. To enhance the meaningfulness of these grades, we supplement them with individual thinking proficiency profiles for each student. These profiles are derived from subscores attributed to particular exam questions, organized by the corresponding thinking skills. We report the average thinking proficiency profiles of all students and compare the average profiles among students from different grade groups. The objective is to aid instructors in identifying areas that may require improvement in the learning process.