Best Practices for Administering Concept Inventories

Abstract

There are a plethora of concept inventories in physics available for faculty to use, but it is not always clear exactly why you would use these tests, or how you should administer them and interpret the results. These multiple-choice research-based tests about physics concepts are valuable because they allow for standardized comparisons among institutions, instructors, or over time. In order for these comparisons to be meaningful, you should use best practices for administering the tests. Here we discuss best practices for administering concept inventories including background on these types of tests and specifics of how to give them online or in-class. We also discuss advantages and disadvantages of different incentives you could give your students, interpretation of scores and common concerns you may have about using concept inventories.

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Multilingual Performance of a Multimodal Artificial Intelligence System on Multisubject Physics Concept Inventories
• PhysPort use and growth: Supporting physics teaching with research-based resources since 2011
• Does transitioning to online classes mid-semester affect conceptual understanding?
• Best Practices for Administering Attitude and Beliefs Surveys
• A three-year comparative study of dominant misconceptions among first-year physics students at a South African university
• Investigating students seriousness during selected conceptual inventory surveys