Pondering zeros: analysis of a decade of blanks and missed quizzes.

When assessing student work, graders will often find that some students will leave one or more problems blank on assessments. Since there is no work shown, the grader has no means to evaluate the studentu0027s understanding of a particular problem, and thus awards u0027zerou0027 points. This practice punishes the student behavior of leaving a problem blank, but this zero is not necessarily an accurate assessment of student understanding of a particular topic. While some might argue that this practice is u0027fairu0027 in that students are aware that they canu0027t receive points for problems they donu0027t attempt, we share evidence that this practice unequally impacts different student groups. We analyze 10 years of UC Davis introductory physics course databases to show that different groups of students (by gender, racial/ethnic group, first generation, etc.) skip problems, and entire exams at different rates. We also share some implications for grading and teaching practices.