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Re: [Phys-l] Thoughts on FCI (Force Concept Inventory) & MBT



Hi all
I like Brian's point, but it misses the first question that must be asked: Does it really matter what the coach says? It is important that the test is written, while the coach's comments are oral. The two modes of communication are NOT seamless for most people.
Regards,
Jack

"Trust me. I have a lot of experience at this."
General Custer's unremembered message to his men,
just before leading them into the Little Big Horn Valley




On Tue, 25 Aug 2009, Brian Whatcott wrote:

This thread set me to pondering on the variability of responses to
physics style questions, depending on some possibly extraneous
factors. It is particularly interesting to hear that faculty too can
settle on an inappropriate answer, on initial consideration.
It was this finding as much as anything, that directed my thoughts
to FCI style questions as word puzzles.

Suppose I decorate questions in this way:
1) A woman departing on vacation sets a brooch on top of her suitcase,
as she descends the tall apartment building where she lives, in an
elevator. A second passenger brushes the jewelry off its perch
with a horizontal gesture while talking to her, by mistake.

What sort of path does the brooch take on its way to the floor?
Drops more slowly than usual? Hesitates before dropping? (etc)

2) A woman unloads her shopping cart into her car-boot then
walks the cart to the ramp access in the store front cart rack.
At this 30 degree slope, she pushes the cart up hill,
hoping it will just make it to the train of carts at the top
of the ramp. She has not pushed quite hard enough however,
so the cart rolls uphill to a stop, and rolls back down.
What can you say about the cart's acceleration at the
moment the cart changes direction?

It turns out that questions couched in this way are
not gender-neutral - they tend to favor female students.

Both the scenarios mentioned here have unexpected results -
a puzzle-maker might say one is subtly indirected
(as a good puzzle-maker should aspire to do!)

I might therefore conclude that puzzles which are concocted
to mislead in an entertaining way will be much better handled,
if coaches were to say something like this:
"Here are some puzzles which try to lead you off track.
If you tread carefully, you can easily defeat the
puzzle-master however! :-)
Moreover, you may see wording which depicts scenes
which are not natural to you: don't let that wording
mislead you....."

Brian W

John Mallinckrodt wrote:
These are clearly preinstruction results. Moreover, the item
analysis strongly suggests that these students have had no previous
instruction at any level in the physics concept of "force."

/snip/
John Mallinckrodt
Cal Poly Pomona

On Aug 24, 2009, at 8:11 AM, Thomas O'Neill wrote:


Jane,
I gave the FCI to 72 students last week and the mean score was
6.2 with a std. dev of 3.1. The item analysis was shown below
1 39
2 13
3 15
4 5
5 5
6 31
7 24
8 12
9 27
10 7
11 2
12 43
13 5
14 17
15 5
16 24
17 3
18 1
19 22
20 3
21 21
22 13
23 15
24 35
25 2
26 2
27 28
28 9
29 8
30 4
Where the first number is the question and the second number is the
number of correct answers out of 72.
From: jane.jackson@asu.edu (Jane Jackson) /snip/

The Force Concept Inventory (1995 revision -- I. Halloun, R.R.
Hake, E.P. Mosca, and D. Hestenes) is available (as.pdf) to educators
Visit <http://modeling.asu.edu> and click on "Research and
Evaluation".

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