The use of validated concept inventories, which are sets of questions designed and tested to accurately probe student understanding of a particular field or topic, is an accepted method of assessing student learning. However, the use of concept inventories is often avoided by instructors because they take considerable class time to complete. This project seeks to streamline and revise existing concept inventories into shortened versions that retain their statistical power for student assessment. The project will develop a standard method to create multiple shortened concept inventories from established inventories currently used in STEM education. Generating shortened but relevant concept inventories will decrease the class time needed to employ these inventories and will also mitigate memorization effects that can occur when the same concept inventory is used to measure learning before and after a lesson is conducted. Results from this project will provide a powerful new method of assessing student learning.
This three-year project to refine and apply short concept inventory creation methodology will result in shortened versions of four commonly used concept inventories - the Mechanics Baseline Test and the Brief Electricity and Magnetism Assessment (both from Physics), the Statics Concept Inventory (from Engineering), and the Biology Concept Inventory. Statistical analysis, item response theory, factor analysis, equating modeling, and discipline-specific experts will guide the creation process to help ensure equivalence to the original concept inventories and between the shortened versions. Randomized testing will produce data that allows for comparisons between new shortened concept inventories and the original full length tests to determine the equivalence of the multiple versions and the appropriate conversion models to translate scores between versions. Upon successful validation, the shortened concept inventories will be immediately ready to administer in relevant courses and the methodology will be applicable to other concept inventories by researchers across all STEM disciplines. This research will also produce baseline outcomes for implementation strategies and guide efforts to promote widespread use of shortened concept inventories. The methodology developed in this research will be carefully detailed, giving step by step instructions to apply to further concept inventories by other researchers. In addition, this research will help to inform future concept inventory development of short parallel concept inventories to make STEM learning assessment more accessible to all educators.
