Development, testing, and application of a chemistry concept inventory

Abstract

A Chemistry Concept Inventory (CCI) has been created that provides linkages to misconceptions observed in chemistry and subsequent introductory materials engineering courses as revealed by a Materials Concept Inventory (MCI). The CCI topics included were bonding, intermolecular forces, electrochemistry, equilibrium, thermochemistry and acids and bases. Numerous students were interviewed in development of questions in order to ascertain that the questions and responses were interpreted as intended. Questioning students on topics of molecular shape gave helpful insight into how students solve problems. For example, a question might be written to test one aspect of the topic, but students might solve it differently. They might use different reasoning that would lead to a correct answer. The item is therefore testing something other than the intended topic. Interviews led to some unique findings in spatial understanding and misconceptions held by these students. Multiple rounds of testing were then used in ascertaining development of a valid Chemistry Concept Inventory.

The Statistics Concept Inventory: Development and Analysis of a Cognitive Assessment Instrument in Statistics

“…Another publication on the CCI (Krause, et al, 2004a) contains essentially the same information described above. Additional information about student interviews indicates the importance of including little words (e.g., "each") for clarity.…”

Development of an inventory for Alternative Conceptions among students in chemistry

“…The CCI is, however, only evaluated and validated in a university context. From a test bank of about 113 concept questions originating from the chemistry inventories of Krause et al (Krause, Birk, Bauer, Jenkins, & Pavelich, 2004), Mulford and Robinson (Mulford & Robinson, 2002) and about 30 questions made by ourselves, we excluded a number of questions as being out of context or not suitable for our purposes, leaving us with 70 remaining questions. These questions were compared with the curriculum of all the general chemistry courses given at NTNU, by us and other experts at NTNU, as to exclude questions not covered.…”

“…The test was developed from a number of existing validated concept inventories in chemistry (Krause, Birk, Bauer, Jenkins, & Pavelich, 2004) (Mulford & Robinson, 2002) in addition to questions written by the authors based on literature and personal experience. The main objective is to use the inventory in the compulsory general chemistry courses for mapping students' understanding of concepts and to use it for finding effects of teaching activities.…”

Dividing the Force Concept Inventory into two equivalent half-length tests

“…However, less time is often not an option since test anxiety could be raised by any reduction of the time allotted [6]. As a comparison, the Chemistry Concept Inventory was developed with only 20 questions so that it could be administered in a short period of time [7]. The second issue is the test-retest memorization effect when identical questions are used in pre-post testing.…”