Concept Inventory - Concept Inventories in Use

Concept Inventories in Use

The first concept inventory was developed in 1985. It covers the understanding of basic concepts in classical mechanics. Hestenes, Halloun, Wells, and Swackhamer developed the first of the concept inventories to be widely disseminated, the Force Concept Inventory (FCI). The FCI was designed to assess student understanding of the Newtonian concepts of force. Hestenes (1998) found that while "nearly 80% of the could state Newton's Third Law at the beginning of the course. FCI data showed that less than 15% of them fully understood it at the end". These results have been replicated in a number of studies involving students at a range of institutions (see sources section below), and have led to greater recognition in the physics education research community of the importance of students' "active engagement" with the materials to be mastered.

Since the development of the FCI, other physics instruments have been developed. These include the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation developed by Thornton and Sokoloff and the Brief Electricity and Magnetism Assessment developed by Ding et al. For a discussion of how a number of concept inventories were developed see Beichner. Information about physics concept tests can be found at the NC State Physics Education Research Group website (see the external links below).

In addition to physics, concept inventories have been developed in statistics, chemistry, astronomy, basic biology, natural selection, genetics, engineering, and geoscience.

In many areas, foundational scientific concepts transcend disciplinary boundaries. An example of an inventory that assesses knowledge of such concepts is an instrument developed by Odom and Barrow (1995) to evaluate understanding of diffusion and osmosis. In addition, there are non-multiple choice conceptual instruments, such as the essay-based approach suggested by Wright et al. (1998) and the essay and oral exams used by Nehm and Schonfeld (2008).

The data collected with a CI are only useful for measuring student learning when the CI is itself valid and reliable. All users are cautioned to carefully review papers for measures of validity and reliability before employing any CI to measure student learning.