A Rubric for Assessing Thinking Skills in Free-Response Exam Problems.

We designed a rubric to assess free-response exam problems in order to compare thinking skills evidenced in exams in classes taught by different pedagogies. The rubric was designed based on Bloom's taxonomy. The rubric was then used to code exam problems. We analyzed exams from different sections of the algebra-based physics course taught the same semester by the same instructor with different pedagogies. One section was inquiry-based and the other was taught traditionally. We discuss the instrument, present results and present plans for future research. The inquiry-based students demonstrated all of the thinking skills coded more often than the traditional students.