Collaborative Research: Development and Testing of a Fundamentals of Environmental Engineering Concept Inventory

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This project is developing a Fundamentals of Environmental Engineering Concept Inventory (FEECI) and doing the first round of testing at ten US university campuses with required undergraduate FEE courses. Project goals also include further refinement of the FEECI and its dissemination. The expected outcome of this work is a validated, reliable instrument for assessing conceptual understanding in a core curriculum course for Civil and/or Environmental engineering. Such an instrument will play an important role in assessment for programmatic accreditation under the ABET standards, and provide a needed technique for formative assessment of instructional methods and pedagogical frameworks in the FEE curriculum. Another important outcome will be the formation of the Development Team, a strong community of faculty, trained in the use of the FEECI and dedicated to improving FEE instruction.Specific activities and milestones of this project include:1. On online Delphi study of 14 members of the FEECI Development Team - a group of faculty members from ten universities who have taught FEE courses for many years. The development team is determining the concepts in FEE that are critical but prone to misconception among students;2. Student interviews and brainstorming sessions to generate a list of critical concepts from the students' perspectives (similar to the guidelines for the faculty generated list); 3. A reconciled list of concepts based on the first two milestones and a draft set of multiple-choice questions for the FEECI;4. A finalized beta version of the FEECI completed during a face-to-face meeting of the Development Team members at the Association of Environmental Engineering & Science Professors (AEESP) summer meeting;5. A trial use of the FEECI to students at ten campuses in fall 2011 and spring 2012;6. A statistical analysis of validity and reliability of the FEECI using data from the ten participating universities;The draft FEECI questions are being refined based on analysis of test data, student interviews, and expert peer review; Documentation is also being prepared for using the FEECI and guiding the interpretation of the results of its application.