Introduction to Selecting and Using Research-Based Assessment Instruments (RBAIs)

During the 2025-2026 academic year, we are offering a series of presentation-discussion-workshops to share some of the many research-based assessment instruments (RBAIs) used in the physics education community. Join us to learn how to select the instruments that best meet your needs and how you can use these instruments to inform your teaching, to assess your students' learning, and to contribute to a wider body of knowledge about physics students at two-year colleges.

In this first session we'll show you how to find research-based assessment instruments, how their validation is rated, how to best administer them, and what some of their limitations are. Our facilitator for this session will be Jayson Nissen, who has been involved in the development and assessment of RBAIs. He will speak on "Modernizing formative, research-based asssessments with cognitive diagnostic models on the LASSO platform." 

The LASSO platform provides instructors and researchers with access to 83 research-based assessments spanning both conceptual knowledge and affective measures. This talk will describe how instructors can use the platform, highlight best practices for administering low-stakes formative assessments online, and share ongoing work to develop cognitive diagnostics to replace existing fixed-length assessments. Adaptive assessments based on cognitive diagnostic models offer significant advantages over the fixed-length RBAs commonly used in physics education research. We have developed and deployed the Mechanics Cognitive Diagnostics (MCD), which assesses 19 learning objectives and provides a measure of students’ mastery of each objective. Instructors can select which objectives to measure and when to administer them, enabling them to track how student mastery develops over time. We are now expanding the MCD to include approximately 40 learning objectives covering the content of most introductory mechanics courses.

This event is free, and will be online using Zoom.

Facilitator: Jayson Nissen (Montana State University)

Resources:

• PhysPort link (same login as for OPTYCs and ComPADRE)
• LASSO link (Learning About STEM Student Outcomes)
• Resource Letter on RBAIs (Madsen, McKagan, Sayre, Am. J. Phys. 85, 245–264 (2017))