Open-Ended Exam Tasks

For a variety of reasons, I’ve been thinking a lot about open-ended tasks for assessment. This style of physics “problem” gives the student the opportunity to use a variety of different approaches to demonstrate their understanding in a semi-authentic context.

Below are the open-ended tasks from the Scottish Qualifications Authority physics exams 2014-2017 (ie: from the N5, Higher, and Advanced Higher exams). My primary purpose in posting these here is to provide a resource for students studying toward their SQA qualifications.*  I think that answering this type of problem effectively requires careful practice, and I hope this collection is useful for that!

First, here’s the detailed rubric. Each open-ended task is scored between 0 and 3 marks.

And here are the prompts. A few have been excluded because they are built into the context of a longer problem. A bunch more are here.

* I think this falls within the stated allowed use, but please write me if that is not the case!