Coupling Conceptual and Quantitative Problems to Develop Expertise in Introductory Physics Students

TL;DR

This study investigates how pairing conceptual and quantitative problems in physics affects student performance, revealing that students benefit from solving both but often do not convert conceptual questions into quantitative ones.

Contribution

It demonstrates the advantages of using isomorphic problem pairs in physics education and highlights students' reluctance to convert conceptual questions into quantitative problems.

Findings

Students perform better on conceptual questions when solving paired problems.

Many students do not attempt to convert conceptual questions into quantitative ones.

Explicit encouragement does not significantly increase students' conversion attempts.

Abstract

We discuss the effect of administering conceptual and quantitative isomorphic problem pairs (CQIPP) back to back vs. asking students to solve only one of the problems in the CQIPP in introductory physics courses. Students who answered both questions in a CQIPP often performed better on the conceptual questions than those who answered the corresponding conceptual questions only. Although students often took advantage of the quantitative counterpart to answer a conceptual question of a CQIPP correctly, when only given the conceptual question, students seldom tried to convert it into a quantitative question, solve it and then reason about the solution conceptually. Even in individual interviews, when students who were only given conceptual questions had difficulty and the interviewer explicitly encouraged them to convert the conceptual question into the corresponding quantitative problem by choosing appropriate variables, a majority of students were reluctant and preferred to guess the answer to the conceptual question based upon their gut feeling.