Using Technology to Accelerate the Construction of Concept Inventories - Latent Semantic Analysis and the Biology Concept Inventory.

Concept Inventories are multiple choice instruments that map students’ conceptual understanding in a given subject area. They underpin some of the most effective teaching methods in science education, but they are labour intensive and expensive to construct, which limits their wide use in instruction. We describe how we use Latent Semantic Analysis to accelerate the construction of Concept Inventories in general, and the Biology Concept Inventory in particular.