Example Case Study

Expert TA was used in your PHYS Course for the Fall 2013 semester. You had total of 23 assignments which contained a total of 218 problems. Of these, a total of 87 problems (39.9%) included at least one part that required the entry of a ‘symbolic’ (or ‘algebraic’) answer. The following table provides some key statistics associated with the work done by your students this semester that you may find interesting.

Consider the following while interpreting the data provided below. Assignments are made of problems, problems are made of parts (individual questions), and depending on your settings, the students may be allowed multiple ‘submissions’ per part. For most assignments, it appears that you allowed students up to 10 attempts for each question.

This semester, the number of answers that students submitted, and that Expert TA graded, totaled 15,7590. Of these, 7,9748 answers were incorrect. When answers are incorrect, there is often the opportunity to provide students with feedback. Expert TA had meaningful feedback for students 28,604 times (or 35.9% of the time) for the overall course and 47.6 % of the time when incorrect answers for symbolic questions were submitted. Students chose to access available feedback 53.2% of the time overall and 57.9% of the time for symbolic questions.

Across all question types, students eventually reached the correct answer 72.1% of the time. (Note this may take the student more than one submission.) When students chose to access feedback, they arrived at the correct answer 90.6% of the time. (This also would include students using more than one submission.) This appears to be an indication that the feedback provided to students was helpful.

The following pages contain examples from your class to show how Expert TA is grading symbolic question types. The examples should demonstrate that our system is robust at accepting symbolic answers regardless of the form and also shows examples of feedback provided to students.