How student perceptions of their speed in physics classes predicts course grades.

In introductory physics courses, we have previously found that among students with the same accuracy on math skills like algebra, trigonometry, and vectors, faster students are more likely to get higher exam grades. One among many possible explanations for this speed-grade correlation is that speed on math skills could be causally related to physics self-efficacy, which has been well-documented to predict better physics performance. Students who take more time on math skills may potentially have lower physics self-efficacy, resulting in lower physics grades. In an exploratory study, we surveyed N=368 algebra-based introductory physics students to measure their self-efficacy, perceptions of their own speed, and concern about speed compared to peers. We find that these survey measures are weakly to moderately correlated with each other and grades. Interestingly, they are also moderately correlated with accuracy on pre and posttests of math skills, but weakly correlated with Response Time (RT) on these tests. This suggests that student perceptions of speed may be more influenced by their accuracy on tasks than actual time on task. Further, in regression models, self-efficacy is not predictive of grades when controlling for posttest score and RT, but perception of speed scores are. This suggests that in addition to actual speed, student perception of speed and concern about speed compared to peers may be important to student performance and related to but distinct from self-efficacy or math skills accuracy.