We examine the relationship between homework completion and exam performance
for students having different physics aptitudes for five different semesters of
an introductory electricity and magnetism course. In our analysis, we plot exam
scores versus homework completion scores and calculate the slopes of the line
fits and the Pearson correlations. On average, completing many homework
problems correlated to better exam scores only for students with high physics
aptitude. Low aptitude physics students had a negative correlation between exam
performance and completing homework; the more homework problems they did, the
worse their performance was on exams. One explanation for this effect is that
the assigned homework problems placed an excessive cognitive load on low
aptitude students. As a result, no learning or even negative learning might
have taken place when low aptitude students attempted to do assigned homework.
Another explanation is based on the fact that the negative benefit effects
first appeared when magnetism concepts were introduced. According to this
explanation, low aptitude students had difficulty consolidating knowledge of
magnetic fields with previously-learned knowledge of electric fields. A third
possibility, that a high homework copying rate by low aptitude students impeded
learning, is rejected because two different analyses revealed no evidence of
homework copying.
%0 Generic
%1 Kontur2013Benefits
%A Kontur, F. J.
%A Terry, N. B.
%D 2013
%K education
%T The benefits of completing homework for students with different aptitudes in an introductory physics course
%U http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.2213
%X We examine the relationship between homework completion and exam performance
for students having different physics aptitudes for five different semesters of
an introductory electricity and magnetism course. In our analysis, we plot exam
scores versus homework completion scores and calculate the slopes of the line
fits and the Pearson correlations. On average, completing many homework
problems correlated to better exam scores only for students with high physics
aptitude. Low aptitude physics students had a negative correlation between exam
performance and completing homework; the more homework problems they did, the
worse their performance was on exams. One explanation for this effect is that
the assigned homework problems placed an excessive cognitive load on low
aptitude students. As a result, no learning or even negative learning might
have taken place when low aptitude students attempted to do assigned homework.
Another explanation is based on the fact that the negative benefit effects
first appeared when magnetism concepts were introduced. According to this
explanation, low aptitude students had difficulty consolidating knowledge of
magnetic fields with previously-learned knowledge of electric fields. A third
possibility, that a high homework copying rate by low aptitude students impeded
learning, is rejected because two different analyses revealed no evidence of
homework copying.
@misc{Kontur2013Benefits,
abstract = {{We examine the relationship between homework completion and exam performance
for students having different physics aptitudes for five different semesters of
an introductory electricity and magnetism course. In our analysis, we plot exam
scores versus homework completion scores and calculate the slopes of the line
fits and the Pearson correlations. On average, completing many homework
problems correlated to better exam scores only for students with high physics
aptitude. Low aptitude physics students had a negative correlation between exam
performance and completing homework; the more homework problems they did, the
worse their performance was on exams. One explanation for this effect is that
the assigned homework problems placed an excessive cognitive load on low
aptitude students. As a result, no learning or even negative learning might
have taken place when low aptitude students attempted to do assigned homework.
Another explanation is based on the fact that the negative benefit effects
first appeared when magnetism concepts were introduced. According to this
explanation, low aptitude students had difficulty consolidating knowledge of
magnetic fields with previously-learned knowledge of electric fields. A third
possibility, that a high homework copying rate by low aptitude students impeded
learning, is rejected because two different analyses revealed no evidence of
homework copying.}},
added-at = {2019-02-23T22:09:48.000+0100},
archiveprefix = {arXiv},
author = {Kontur, F. J. and Terry, N. B.},
biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/2e9f9e291794506c76b8b53be97b6065b/cmcneile},
citeulike-article-id = {12343314},
citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.2213},
citeulike-linkout-1 = {http://arxiv.org/pdf/1305.2213},
day = 9,
eprint = {1305.2213},
interhash = {cd2c4b23629c4aff975376a58412b503},
intrahash = {e9f9e291794506c76b8b53be97b6065b},
keywords = {education},
month = may,
posted-at = {2013-05-14 19:55:38},
priority = {2},
timestamp = {2019-02-23T22:15:27.000+0100},
title = {{The benefits of completing homework for students with different aptitudes in an introductory physics course}},
url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.2213},
year = 2013
}