Assessment Instrument Information Page

Please do not allow students to keep copies of any of these tests. It takes years of development effort to create and validate a reliable assessment instrument. If it is released to the public domain, students will locate it and all that work will be for naught. In fact, you might not want to use the formal name of the test on the versions you have students take. None of these tests are to be incorporated into a web-based question delivery system without adequate security to prevent printing or other unauthorized access by students. Contact the authors for more details.

If you have any questions, please contact phone 919-515-7226 or e-mail Robert J. Beichner, NC State Physics Department

TUG-K Beichner's Test of Understanding Graphs in Kinematics is available in English, Spanish, French, German, Finnish, and Portugese by sending e-mail to beichner@ncsu.edu. A discussion of the test is in R. Beichner, "Testing student interpretation of kinematics graphs," Am. J. Phys., 62, 750-762, (1994).

Deardorff & Beichner's Test of Measurement Uncertainty Concepts can be requested from beichner@ncsu.edu.

BEMA Chabay & Sherwood's Brief Electricity and Magnetism Assessment attempts to assess what students know about the most basic and central concepts of the calculus-based introductory E&M course. It is comprehensive, covering topics from the Coulomb force law to magnetic induction, but omitting radiation because it is so common for the intro course not to get that far. It has been used by various instructors in various settings and has been judged an appropriate and fair assessment of introductory E&M by physicists experienced in teaching E&M at various levels. It is not aimed at any particular curriculum but contains only those elements common to all calculus-based introductory courses. You will see on the cover page that some special grading can be imposed to make a more accurate measurement, and a spreadsheet is available from rwchabay@unity.ncsu.edu and basherwo@unity.ncsu.edu that performs these adjustments. Details about the test can be found in L. Ding, R. Chabay, B. Sherwood, and R. Beichner, "Evaluating an electricity and magnetism assessment tool: Brief electricity and magnetism assessment", Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 2, 010105 (2006).

CSEM The Maloney, van Heuvelen, Hieggelke, and O'Kuma Conceptual Survey in Electricity and Magnetism (along with a separate test on electricity and another on magnetism) is available from maloney@ipfw.edu. More info can be found at the Two Year College Physics website and from D. Maloney, T. O'Kuma, C. Hieggelke, and A. Van Heuvelen, "Surveying students' conceptual knowledge of electricity and magnetism", Am. J. Phys. 69, S12 (2001).

DEEM Marx and Wilson have developed an E & M test that is available by contacting Jeff Marx at jmarx@mcdaniel.edu.

DIRECT 1.2 Engelhardt & Beichner's test of simple resistive electrical circuit concepts is available in English, Spanish, and Finnish by mailing a request to beichner@ncsu.edu. More details are in P. Engelhardt, and R. Beichner, "Students’ understanding of direct current resistive electrical circuits", Am. J. of Phys, 72, 98-115, (2004).

ECCE The Electric Circuits Conceptual Evaluation is available from the Workshop Physics site. You'll need a password.

EMCI Notaros has created an instrument to assess learning in upper division E & M courses...the Electromagnetics Concept Inventory. Contact him at Branislav Notaros or visit the website.

RAPT Two parallel versions of Allain & Beichner's Rate and Potential Test is available by sending e-mail to beichner@ncsu.edu.

FCI The Force Concept Inventory by Halloun, Hake, Mosca, and Hestenes is available from http://modeling.asu.edu/R&E/Research.html.You'll need to request a password to open the file. Several articles describing the test are at the above page.

MBT The Mechanics Baseline Test by Hestenes and Wells is available from http://modeling.asu.edu/R&E/Research.html.You'll need a password to open the file. An article describing the test is available at above page.

FMCE The Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation was developed by Ron Thornton & David Sokoloff. Information can be see in R. Thornton, and D. Sokoloff, "Assessing student learning of Newton's laws: The Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation and the Evaluation of Active Learning Laboratory and Lecture Curricula", Am. J. Phys., 66, Issue 4, 338-352 (1998).

HCTE The Heat and Temperature Conceptual Evaluation is available from the Workshop Physics site. You'll need a password.

TCI Midkiff created an upper division engineering thermodynamics concept test. Contact Clark Midkiff or visit the website.

TTCI Thermal and Transport Concept Inventor (separate surveys also exist for thermo, heat, and fluids). More info is at this website. Contact Ron Miller. A password is required to see survey questions and Ron will be happy to provide one.

Light and Optics: Rumor has it that a light & optics test is in the works from the Workshop Physics site.

ECS The Energy Concepts Survey looks at concepts in energy and momentum, contact Chandralekha Singh, 100 Allen Hall, Department of Physics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260 singh@bondi.phyast.pitt.edu, 412-624-9045. A Finnish version is available form Antti Savinainen, antti.savinainen@kuopio.fi.

QMVI The Quantum Mechanics Visualization Instrument by Robinett is available.

ADT Mike Zeilik and others have developed an astronomy diagnostic test. It is available from Mike Zeilik at MZeilik@aol.com. (You can copy it directly from a web page, if you'd like.) A collection of classroom assessment instruments can be found at FLAG.

LPCI Rebecca Lindell has created The Lunar Phases Concept Inventory, which is available from us.

LSCI The Light and Spectroscopy Concept Inventory was developed by Erin Bardar. An article, including a link to the instrument, is available online.

GECI The Greenhouse Effect Concept Inventory was developed by John Keller. Contact him for more information.

SPCI The Star Properties Concept Inventory is based on the dissertation research of Janelle Bailey. The first publication is in edits and will appear in Astronomy Education Review.

Another SPCI is the Space Physics Concept inventory, created through a collaboration of the University of Colorado, UCLA, and the University of Texas. it is available online.

WCI Teri Rhodes and Ron Roedel have written a Wave Concept Inventory appropriate for upper division students

The Solomon & Felder Index of Learning Styles is available on the web. Information giving many details on the Felder & Silverman Learning Styles Model is also available.

Lawson's Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning is available from Anthony Lawson by e-mailing him directly. Tell him we sent you!

MMCE The Mathematical Modeling Conceptual Evaluation is available from the Workshop Physics site. You'll need a password.

MPEX The Maryland Expectations Survey can be found at http://www.physics.umd.edu/perg/expects/ex.htm

VASS Views About Science Survey is available from http://modeling.asu.edu/R&E/Research.html.You'll need to request a password to open the file.

CLASS Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey and a scoring spreadsheet are available from http://CLASS.colorado.edu. Additional information can be found in W. K. Adams, K. K. Perkins, N. S. Podolefsky, M. Dubson, N. D. Finkelstein, and C. E. Wieman, "New instrument for measuring student beliefs about physics and learning physics: The Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey", Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 2, 010101 (2006).

Two tests related to collaborative teams are available by contacting Ted Powers.

Some folks have expressed interest in tests of biology concepts. Info is available online or by contacting Mike Klymkowsky of the University of Colorado at Boulder. You may also want to investigate the Conceptual Inventory of Natural Selection from Anderson DL, Fisher KM, Norman GJ. 2002. "Development and Evaluation of the Conceptual Inventory of Natural Selection". Journal of Research in Science Teaching 39(10): 952-978 (Dec. 2002)

Jerome Epstein has been working on the Calculus Concept Inventory for a long time.

Folks at Purdue have assembled a list of engineering concept inventories that you may find useful.

Since any funding test designers get for developing additional tests depends on showing our funding agencies that the tests are useful, all of us would really appreciate hearing about how you are utilizing them. The NCSU projects mentioned on this page were supported, in part, by the Department of Education and the National Science Foundation. Opinions expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the sponsors. P116B71905, P116B000659, DUE-9752313, DGE-9714546, DGE-9554526, DUE-9981107

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