Development of a concept inventory for fluid mechanics

Concept inventories are assessment tools designed to determine the degree to which students understand the concepts of a subject and to identify the misconceptions that students hold. The results of a concept inventory can be used to change the methods of instruction to overcome student misconceptions. A cooperative effort between mechanical engineering faculty at the Universities of Wisconsin-Madison and Illinois, Champaign-Urbana has been directed toward development of a fluid mechanics concept inventory (FMCI). Fluid mechanics typically follows thermodynamics in the sequence of courses in thermal sciences, involves both the mechanics and dynamics of fluids, and builds on basic physics and Newtonian mechanics. This paper describes the process used for development of the FMCI, the details of how we determined the content, and examples of actual content of the instrument itself.