Evaluation Instruments: the FCI and Beyond

AMTA Members

Evaluation instruments, their passwords and answer keys for a given content area can be found in the eWebLife Resources directory for that subject area; e.g., the FCI and MBT can be found in Physics, the ABCC and MCI can be found in Chemistry, etc.

It is important that you do not make any of these tests available on a non-secured website or allow students to keep copies of them.  It takes years to design and validate a reliable instrument to assess student understanding; this effort will be wasted once students are able to locate them.

Non AMTA Members

Verified educators can download the following assessments from https://www.physport.org/assessments/

FCI – Force Concept Inventory

The revised Force Concept Inventory (I. Halloun, R.R. Hake, E.P. Mosca, and D. Hestenes) is available (as a .pdf file) to authorized educators. AMTA members can access the password and assessment via eweblife. Other educators can access the FCI at https://www.physport.org/assessments/FCI.

If you plan to use the test with middle school or early high school students, please considering using the Simplified FCI, which is designed for these students. You can access the Simplified FCI at https://www.physport.org/assessments/SFCI.

You must agree to keep the test and password secure, as described in the document you will receive.

Articles about the FCI

• D. Hestenes, M. Wells, and G. Swackhamer, Force Concept Inventory from The Physics Teacher.
  Download Revised Table I and/or Revised Table II from Hestenes’s 1992 article on FCI.
• D. Hestenes and I. Halloun, Interpreting the FCI. The Physics Teacher 33: 502-506 (1995)
• I. Halloun and D. Hestenes, Search for Coherence in FCI data
• D. Hestenes, Who Needs Physics Education Research?, Am. J. Phys. 66: 465-467 (1998)
• D. Hestenes, Notes for a Modeling Theory of Science, Cognition and Instruction (2006). Pages 16-22 are very important in explaining why the FCI is so successful in assessing student concept understanding.

MBT-Mechanics Baseline Test

The Mechanics Baseline test should be compared with the Force Concept Inventory. The Baseline is the next step above the Inventory in mechanics understanding. Questions on the Inventory were designed to be meaningful to students without formal training in mechanics and to elicit their preconceptions about the subject. In contrast, the Baseline emphasizes concepts that cannot be grasped without formal knowledge about mechanics. The two tests are complementary probes for understanding of the most basic Newtonian concepts. Together they give a fairly complete profile of this understanding.

AMTA members can access the password and assessment via eweblife. Other verified educators can get information about accessing the MBT at https://www.physport.org/assessments/MBT.

You must agree to keep the test and password secure, as described in the document you will receive. If you plan to use the test with middle school or early high school students, please indicate this.

Article describing MBT

• D. Hestenes and M. Wells, A Mechanics Baseline Test, The Physics Teacher 30: 159-165 (1992).