Paula Engelhardt
Tenessee Tech

The Force Concept Inventory and other diagnostics . What do they really 
tell us?

The Force Concept Inventory has become a staple tool in evaluating 
students. understanding of force concepts.  It has also been used 
extensively to evaluate curricular materials and course changes.  But what 
do tools like the FCI and other similar diagnostics really tell us?  A 
research project was recently begun to look into why student choose the 
idea of force in the direction of motion.  Preliminary results from this 
work will be presented and compared with pre-post statistical data 
collected over the past 5 years at Tennessee Technological University.  
Another study of a subset of items taken from DIRECT and used on SEMCO 
will be discussed.  DIRECT is a diagnostic instrument covering dc 
resistive electric circuits while SEMCO is a composite instrument covering 
electricity, magnetism, circuits, and optics for the second semester of 
physics.  The test items on SEMCO come from the CSE, CSM, DIRECT, and 
ConcepTests on optics.  Analysis indicated that the questions do not 
behave in the same way on both instruments.