Best Practices for Administering Concept Inventories

TL;DR

This paper reviews best practices for administering physics concept inventories, emphasizing proper procedures, interpretation, and incentives to ensure meaningful comparisons and effective use of these research-based assessments.

Contribution

It provides comprehensive guidelines on administering concept inventories, including methods for online and in-class testing, and discusses interpretation and incentives.

Findings

Proper administration enhances data reliability.

Incentive strategies impact student participation.

Clear interpretation improves assessment usefulness.

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.