How I'm using the 2020 released AP problems for exam review: Identical Situations

The 2020 digital AP physics exams were all digital, all at home.  That meant the development committees had to go many extra miles to produce exams which made cheating nigh-on impossible in the moment.  For the Physics 1 exam, at least, that meant on one hand a huge variety of problems.  Yay!*

*Note that I am emphatically NOT on any development committee.  I don't think those folks ever said "yay" as they desperately put these exams together under significant time pressure last spring.  But I say yay, and send them my deep thanks.

Even better, many of the 2020 exam problems came in pairs or triplets referencing identical situations, but with subtly different questions asked about the situation.

Why are these sibling exam problems "even better" than a bunch of brand-new problems?  Because these have led to some of the most valuable exam review activities I've ever experienced.

Novice physics students tend to see every problem as completely new, completely impenetrable at first.  We know that they should start with a fact of physics or an applicable equation, and then they should figure out how those facts and equations apply to the specific situation.  They too often think they should know the answer right away, and that if they don't they're stupid.   

I remember a quote from a guest speaker at one of our opening faculty meetings.  He referenced research about how children learn to read: they learn best when they repeatedly read about topics they're familiar with.  A kid likes dinosaurs? They should read about dinosaurs.  Again and again and again.  

So this spring I've had my students do problems involving situations they're already familiar with - by assigning the triplets of 2020 exam problems that reference the same situation.  They do the first version for homework, getting some right and some wrong.  Then they do the second version for homework.  Suddenly, since they are already familiar with the situation, they are paying attention to the physics principles in play!  I can see the greater confidence on night 2.

Then on the third day, I've given the last version as an in-class quiz, which we grade to the official rubric.  I got the highest quiz scores in recent memory!  Now, obviously, there wasn't the issue of coming to grips with a new situation.  But that's the point!  My students, for the first time, internalized the idea that every new problem can be solved by applying physics principles.  Any mistakes were due to physics misconceptions, not issues with reading comprehension or personal confidence.

How do I get these problems, Greg?  They are available on AP classroom.  Like everything in that platform, it requires an application of black magic to accomplish what you want to do.  I created a new quiz; then I searched for problems worth 10 points.  See, all "normal" AP physics 1 problems are either 7 or 12 points.  But in 2020, the paragraph problems were 10 points, the qualitative-quantitative translation problems were 15 points.  Searching by point value got me just the 2020 free response.  Then, I looked for identical descriptors, put them into a single "quiz", and assigned the quiz in hard copy.  (The interface lets you print out the answer sheets.)  Yes, that's a lot of work to get the problems you need.  Nothing in AP classroom is easy or intuitive.  But these problems are there... and they are worth using your reserved black magic spells!