Although conceptual assessment tests are commonly administered at the beginning and end of a semester, this pre-post approach has inherent limitations. Specifically, education researchers and instructors have limited ability to observe the progression of students' conceptual understanding throughout the course. Furthermore, instructors are limited…

This paper presents improvements made to a computerized adaptive testing (CAT)-based version of the FCI (FCI-CAT) in regards to test security and test efficiency. First, we will discuss measures to enhance test security by controlling for item overexposure, decreasing the risk that respondents may (i) memorize the content of a pretest for use on…

As a method to shorten the test time of the Force Concept Inventory (FCI), we suggest the use of computerized adaptive testing (CAT). CAT is the process of administering a test on a computer, with items (i.e., questions) selected based upon the responses of the examinee to prior items. In so doing, the test length can be significantly shortened.…