Concept inventories are research-based multiple-choice tests that are used in educational settings to measure a student’s knowledge of a set of concepts while also capturing conceptions and misconceptions they may have about the topic under consideration.
They provide useful information for students, lecturers and educational researchers. For example, they can provide lecturers with a measure of the knowledge that their students gain during a module. For an individual student, a concept inventory may highlight topics that they need to focus on and can give their lecturer insights into the specific misconceptions they need to tackle. For an educational researcher, concept inventories can be used to explore the effects that different teaching methods have on student understanding.
Current methods for creating these are slow and laborious and usually focus on surveying those who teach the specific module topic under consideration. This project aims to explore the use of AI tools for the creation of concept inventories – in particular, focusing on the creation of concept inventory for topics in computer science.