Engineering Physics I: Guidelines for Standards Revisions

If you wish to retake standards, you must complete revisions on the missed questions.  This is to ensure that you have worked on the content before testing again.  Revisions must be satisfactory, as described below, and must be completed in time.

What revisions are

Write an analysis of what went wrong in your answers to the problems that were not awarded full credit.  A good analysis contains a brief, insightful essay for the standards that you missed.  Here is what to do:

Prepare your thoughts

Examine why you answered as you did.  If you chose your answer for a regrettable reason such as a wild guess or accidentally selecting the wrong answer from a multiple choice, think of steps you can take to avoid making such mistakes in the future. 

Learn why the “correct” answer really is correct.  You should understand the problem well enough to teach someone else how to solve it.  If you don’t, please see me!  Learn how to approach and solve the problem before writing the revision.

Compare your thinking during the quiz to the correct approach.  You should be able to identify where your thinking went wrong.  What should you have known to take the correct path instead of the path you followed?  This is your missing insight.

Communicate

Thoroughly explain your thinking in writing to me, so that I can understand what was going on inside your head. I want to understand my students’ thought processes, so that I can meet them where they are.

Then, thoroughly explain to me how to correctly approach and solve the problem.  Simply repeating my explanation, quoting a web site, or referring to lecture notes is not sufficient: explain it in your own words, showing that you now can do the problem.

Include in your analysis for each question:

• What the question was
• What you were thinking when you answered the question. 
• Why you answered as you did.  Did you misunderstand what you were supposed to find?  Were you thinking in terms of incorrect physics?  If so, what were you getting at?
• How to solve the problem correctly.  Explain this as if you are explaining to a confused classmate, or to your former self, the day before you took the quiz or retest.
• The missing insight about the problem that would have led you to the correct answer.  If you get this right, you will be able to answer different questions about the same physics, not just minor variations of the question you are revising.

Make sure that each analysis is complete enough that I can really understand what you were thinking and why when you took the quiz.  Also be sure that your description of the missing insight is complete enough to prove to me that you now really understand the correct answer and why it is correct.

If there is anything else you would like to add, please include it as well.  I am especially interested in what you think that you could have done to have better prepared yourself for the quiz, and in what you think I could have done to have better prepared you for the quiz.

How it’s accepted

I will tell you if the revision qualifies you for a retest, and give feedback on the revision.  If the revision is not sufficient to qualify you for a retest, you'll get another chance and another deadline.  Please do not submit an insufficient, cursory revision just to get it in before the deadline: this only works if you act in good faith.  Please make your revision thorough!  The point is for you to have a solid understanding of the physics principles that apply to the problem.