Results from a Statics Concept Inventory and their Relationship to other Measures of Performance in Statics

Abstract

Concept inventories have been proposed for an increasing number of subjects in engineering and other fields. Such an assessment tool has been developed for Engineering Statics. An assessment instrument like a concept inventory is of value, however, only if performance on it is an indicator of performance in the subject more generally. The relation between class examinations and inventory performance were reported recently for students at the home institution of inventory developer (Steif). In the present paper, the relation between class examinations and inventory performance for additional schools was analyzed. The inventory is found to be predictive of student performance at other institutions, and is relevant to a wider range of problems than earlier suspected