We present results from a study that categorizes and assesses the quality of
questions and explanations authored by students, in question repositories
produced as part of the summative assessment in introductory physics courses
over the past two years. Mapping question quality onto the levels in the
cognitive domain of Bloom's taxonomy, we find that students produce questions
of high quality. More than three-quarters of questions fall into categories
beyond simple recall, in contrast to similar studies of student-authored
content in different subject domains. Similarly, the quality of
student-authored explanations for questions was also high, with approximately
60% of all explanations classified as being of high or outstanding quality.
Overall, 75% of questions met combined quality criteria, which we hypothesize
is due in part to the in-class scaffolding activities that we provided for
students ahead of requiring them to author questions.Comment: 24 pages, 5 figure
