The effects of physics ranking tasks on student understanding of conceptual physics concepts

Abstract

In this research physics ranking tasks were introduced to see if they could increase students' conceptual knowledge in general and calculus based physics courses. Assessments were given both pre and post in order to calculate a class's percent gain. Although students did not seem to enjoy or appreciate these types of tasks at the beginning, analysis of the percent gain did show a remarkable increase in the conceptual concepts that were assessed due to the physics ranking tasks.