Development of the CECI, the Control Engineering Concept Inventory: Contributors welcome!

Development of the CECI, the Control Engineering Concept Inventory: Contributors welcome!

The Engineering Education Research Group at the Hamburg University of Technology is developing a control engineering concept inventory, the CECI.  Concept inventories (CIs) are standardised multiple choice instruments measuring the conceptual understanding in a certain field or area.  They are often used to quantify student learning for a particular course or cohort, and thereby give empirical evidence of the success of instruction.  In the case of physics, the development of the Force Concept Inventory more than 20 years ago led to a substantial development and the spread of new and more student-centered teaching methods, practices, and materials.  By now, more than 100 concept inventories exist in various subject areas in science and engineering, but so far there is no universally accepted CI for control engineering.  The process of designing the CECI involves several steps, including the selection of relevant concepts, the drafting and validation of multiple-choice items, and the testing of pilot versions of the inventory to establish reliability and validity through statistical means. For more info visit the website.