PROCEEDINGS OF THE 20TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2017
San Diego, California
Beyond the exam score: Gauging conceptual understanding from final exams in Calculus II
Page: 1679
Instructors often want to evaluate their students’ degrees of conceptual understanding in theirmathematics courses, but are typically limited to course assignments and exams. In this researchwe ask: To what extent can mathematics instructors recognize conceptual understanding of theirstudents based on final exam responses? During a summer REU program we examinedpre-existing exams along with other course materials to address this question. We developedcodes for student responses that were guided by Anderson and Krathwohl (2001), Mejia-Ramoset al. (2011), Thurston (1994), and the APOS framework. Student responses more clearly andoften demonstrated lower level understanding than deeper, conceptual knowledge because fewproblems called for explanations or justifications. The goal of this research was to improve theeffectiveness of assessments in evaluating conceptual understanding. In future exams, we suggestthat prompting students to display behaviors typical of varying levels of understanding withjustification would make evaluations more accurate.Keywords: