The development of estimated cognitive attribute profiles for the Concept Assessment Tool for Static

The Concept Assessment Tool for Statics is a concept inventory instrument designed to detect errors associated with important and difficult statics concepts. This paper discuses findings from a previous study in which the Arpeggio Software, used to determine the cognitive capability of an assessment instrument, was applied to the concept inventory. Based on a set of cognitive attributes and responses from over 1200 participants, the Arpeggio Software generated estimates of the proportion of members of the population whose estimated attributes' masteries were incorrect. Two research questions guided this study: (1) Can the Fusion Model be appropriately used with CATS to diagnostically measure students' cognitive understanding of Statics concepts? If so, (2) What are the expected patterns of cognitive attribute mastery for the examinees? Results from the analysis showed the diagnostic capacity of the CATS and also the cognitive attributes with the highest occurrence of non-mastery for the sample provided. This information is very helpful to instructors, because it allows them to predict their student's cognitive capacity for the course according to the estimated mastery profiles generated by Arpeggio.