RUME 28
2026
Alexandria, Virginia
Assessment of Student Understanding: Exploring Faculty Optimization Problem Grading
Page: 548
In this study we examine how faculty members grade optimization problems from calculus. Eight faculty members were interviewed and asked to grade three student solutions for three different optimization problems. In addition, faculty members also discussed their grading philosophies and practices for both optimization problems and in general. We used open thematic analysis to analyze all faculty interviews and two major themes of reflection of understanding and key steps in optimization solutions emerged from the data. These themes that was supported by faculty were further analyzed for the interplay between them. In addition, we delve deeper into reflection of understanding using Skemp’s instrumental and relational understanding to establish when faculty assessed good student understanding of optimization problems. Our results provide insight into how mathematics faculty grade student solutions for optimization problems, how they emphasize student understanding, and offer possible insights into the variations in scores we observed in this study.