Effect of written presentation on performance in introductory physics

This study examined the written work of students in the introductory calculus-based electricity and magnetism course at the university of arkansas. the students' solutions to hourly exams were divided into a small set of countable features organized into three major categories,mathematics,language,and graphics. each category was further divided into subfeatures. the total number of features alone explained more than 30% of the variance in exam scores and from 9% to 15% of the variance in conceptual posttest scores. if all features and subfeatures are used,between 44% and 49% of the variance in exam scores is explained and between 22% and 28% of the variance in conceptual posttest scores. the use of language is consistently positively correlated with both exam performance and conceptual understanding. © 2010 the american physical society.