CONCEPTUAL QUESTIONS IN CAPA
Numerical problems are fairly simple to write in CAPA. CAPA also lends itself to conceptual problems, especially
with the templates. With the templates already coded, the teacher only needs to replace the “dummy” text with the
actual physics content. Conceptual questions written in CAPA tend to have multiple parts or choices, forcing the
students to look at a concept from many different angles. With the multiple choice, it is possible for anywhere from
zero to all possibilities to be correct, so each choice has to be analyzed separately. Misconceptions are less likely to
slip past these styles
of conceptual
questions than they
are the numerical
questions. It is not
uncommon for
students to come up
with the right answer
for the wrong
reasons, especially
when dealing with
the typical numerical
problem, where only
one or two questions
involving numbers
are asked on the
same topic. The
student could make enough balanced
mistakes to somehow find the right answer, or simply choose the right
equations from a list, but not actually know what they did. For a
student to arrive at the correct answer for a conceptual CAPA question
without any grasp of the concept, he would need incredible luck. It is
likely and possible to guess right once, but to do it consistently on the
same topic is unlikely. In general, all conceptual problems have
advantages over numerical problems. When students encounter
numerical problems, they manipulate equations to isolate the unknown
but don’t look at the concepts. If they are given a problem without
numbers, there are no equations for them to manipulate. Therefore
they must look at the big picture and see how the whole system works.
Then they are forced to interact with the material, which they will
remember and therefore will retain some physics knowledge from it. Figure 2 shows two problems written in CAPA
that deal with the same basic idea: if one component of a circuit is changed, how will this affect the current through
another component? In the numerical question, B, the student only needs to find equations relating to electrical
circuits and plug the given numbers into them. However, A, the conceptual question, requires the student to think
about how each change will affect the current of the whole circuit and then how this current is distributed through
the circuit’s newly arranged components. A requires the student to see the big picture of how circuits work, while B
allows the student to isolate only the relevant details.
Figure 2 Comparison of conceptual and
numerical problems dealing with
the same topic
Figure 3 Conceptual question covering more than
one
area of physics
Figure 4 Tool to combine numerical and
conceptual questions
To help students break away from the mold of seeing
each physics topic as a completely isolated entity,
conceptual questions should be written that deal with
two or more of the major areas of physics. This type
of question can be done in CAPA as easily as a
problem covering only one concept. Figure 3 is an
example of one such question. By charging an
oscillating pendulum and placing it in an electric
field, this problem forces the student to consider how
mechanical and electrical forces relate and contribute
to the behavior of the pendulum. Problems such as
this one will help students to have a broader
understanding of how all parts of the physical world
work together.
A new idea for CAPA has been to add a conceptual
aspect to numerical problems. This idea grew out of
the concern of one professor that his students do not
have a good idea of what they have done when they
arrive at the correct answer. This can be done in two
templates. One would be the concept list and the
other would be a question asking which concepts
from the list were used to solve the problem. Both
of these files can be edited to fit the specific
assignment and question. For any straight numerical
problems, the student could then be asked as a separate
problem which concepts needed to be used. Whether this
question would be weighted similarly to the numerical
problem or used as a source of extra credit has not yet been
determined. This could help solve the problem of students
reaching the correct answer with no idea of what they did. If
nothing else, it should make them realize that there is a
connection between the equations they are so accustomed to
using and the concepts they hear about in class. This has not
yet been used in any assignments and isn’t formally created
yet, but an example of how this might work is shown in figure
4.