FisicaMente: supporting first-year students in transferring mathematical skills and knowledge to a physical context.

Research in physics education shows that students often enter university-level physics courses lacking the prerequisite mathematics skills and knowledge and/or the ability to apply them in a physical context. To analyze these difficulties and provide students with effective feedback, we have designed two multiple-choice tests, inspired by current research in physics education and in cognitive psychology, and starting from a taxonomy of the most frequent errors made by students. We assessed the tests’ content reliability and discriminatory power both globally and at the single-item level. The tests were administered to first-year students enrolled in Science and Engineering courses