2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

A Comprehensive Review of Six Circuits Concept Inventories to Understand the Content Coverage and Their Merits

This full paper seeks to contribute in the area of course and curriculum design, improvement, and assessment. Understanding basic electric circuits concepts is foundational to many areas of engineering, making it essential for students to master this subject to be effective in their future profession. Therefore, the ability to reliably assess students’ understanding of electric circuits concepts is crucial to identifying ways to improve students’ knowledge of the subject. Concept inventories are one approach that educators and researchers have used to quantify students’ conceptual understanding of a given topic. The idea of concept inventories originated with the Force Concept Inventory in the 1980s. Since then, the approach has been adapted to a variety of topic areas, including basic electric circuits. The Electric Circuits Conceptual Examination (ECCE) debuted in 1996. Several additional concept inventories have been developed in the years since to measure conceptual understanding, to diagnose misconceptions, and to evaluate teaching effectiveness.
In this study, we aim to identify the existing circuits concept inventories, explore their content coverage, check validity and reliability evidence, and discuss the popularity of each one. To achieve this, we first identified six electric circuits concept inventories and created a matrix to evaluate the coverage of the topics addressed in each. For the final paper, we will search for studies on these concept inventories through Google Scholar and utilize a forward and backward snowball methodology to identify additional articles. Once a critical mass of articles has been identified for each assessment tool, we will explore the validity and reliability evidence of each concept inventory in the literature along with their use in both research and practice. We will also create a metric to measure their popularity.
It is anticipated that the results of this study will provide researchers with the knowledge that they need to use concept inventories wisely in order to achieve their unique research outcomes and to assist instructors in selecting the concept inventory best-suited to their specific goals and course objectives.

Authors

Mr. Iman Shayegani http://orcid.org/https://0009-0008-8930-3724 University of Cincinnati [biography]

Iman Shayegani is a Ph.D. student at University of Cincinnati. He received his Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Tehran and his Master's degree in the same field from Shiraz university. He had been an educational consultant and a mathematics teacher for over 10 years in Iran, and helped more than 1000 people to become successful in the University Entrance Exam before starting his Ph.D. program. Based on his experience in working with students and his academic background in electrical engineering, he is trying to find suitable methods of learning for engineering students especially in the electrical engineering field.
Dr. Gregory Warren Bucks http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-0986-7941 University of Cincinnati [biography]

Gregory Bucks joined the Department of Engineering Education at the University of Cincinnati in 2012. He received his BSEE from the Pennsylvania State University in 2004, his MSECE from Purdue University in 2006, and his PhD in Engineering Education in 2010, also from Purdue University. His research interests lie in first-year pedagogy and program assessment as well as conceptual understanding of fundamental computing concepts.
Mr. Ibrahim Nihad Awartani http://orcid.org/https://0000-0001-6267-8253 University of Cincinnati [biography]

Ibrahim Awartani is an international doctoral student pursuing Engineering Education in the Department of Engineering and Computing Education at the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University of Cincinnati. His BSc is a Mechanical Engineering degree from Philadelphia University in Jordan. His MSc background is a Master's of Sciences in Engineering Management from Eastern Michigan University. He has 5 years of project management work experience in the construction and consulting fields and yearly summer teaching experiences in Qinzhou, China. His research interests are focused on international curricula and grading methodology, accessibility, course climates, department culture, and course intervention research.
Dr. So Yoon Yoon http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1868-1054 University of Cincinnati [biography]

Dr. So Yoon Yoon is an assistant professor in the Department of Engineering and Computing Education in the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Cincinnati, OH, USA. Dr. Yoon received her Ph.D. in Gifted Education, and an M.S.Ed. in Research Methods and Measurement with a specialization in Educational Psychology, both from Purdue University, IN, USA. She also holds an M.S. in Astronomy and Astrophysics and a B.S. in Astronomy and Meteorology from Kyungpook National University, South Korea. Her work centers on elementary, secondary, and postsecondary engineering education research as a psychometrician, data analyst, and program evaluator with research interests in spatial ability, STEAM education, workplace climate, and research synthesis with a particular focus on meta-analysis. She has developed, validated, revised, and copyrighted several instruments beneficial for STEM education research and practice. Dr. Yoon has authored more than 85 peer-reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings and served as a journal reviewer in engineering education, STEM education, and educational psychology. She has also served as a PI, co-PI, advisory board member, or external evaluator on several NSF- and NASA-funded projects.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025

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