Student-created physics problems as an independent and equitable assessment tool

Traditional high-stakes summative assessments--timed, in-class exams accounting for a large percentage of the term's overall grade--have often received criticism from the educational community. Such assessments tend to prize a particular "narrow bundle of skills", and have been shown in some contexts to produce disparate outcomes between different demographic groups. Alternative low-stakes assessments have shown potential to improve student engagement and close demographic gaps. In this paper, we document our use of an alternative form of assessment, in which students were asked to create and solve a problem of their own design.