Developed by Rhett Allain and Robert Beichner
| Purpose | To investigate the connection between the students’ ideas about rate of change and electric potential. |
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| Format | Multiple-choice |
| Duration | 30 min |
| Focus | Electricity / Magnetism Content knowledge (electric potential, rate of change) |
| Level | Intro college |
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Sample questions from the RAPT:
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Silver ValidationThis is the second highest level of research validation, corresponding to at least 5 of the validation categories below.
Research Validation Summary
Based on Research Into:
- Student thinking
Studied Using:
- Student interviews
- Expert review
- Appropriate statistical analysis
Research Conducted:
- At multiple institutions
- By multiple research groups
- Peer-reviewed publication
The multiple-choice questions on the RAPT were developed based on student ideas from interviews about rate of change and electric potential or taken from existing research-based assessments. The initial version of the RAPT was tested in think-aloud interviews with students and revised. An open-ended version was then given to students to check that the multiple-choice answers were indeed those that reflected student thinking. The RAPT was given to over 400 introductory physics students at 6 universities, and 18 upper-level physics students. Appropriate statistical analyses of reliability, difficulty and discrimination were performed, and reasonable values found. RAPT results are published in one peer-reviewed paper and one dissertation.
References
- R. Allain, Investigating the Relationship Between Student Difficulties with the Concept of Electric Potential and the Concept of Rate of Change, Thesis, North Carolina State University , 2001.
- R. Allain and R. Beichner, Rate of Change and Electric Potential, presented at the Physics Education Research Conference 2004, Sacramento, California, 2004.
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| Typical Results |
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Typical scores on the RAPT. The RAPT was given as a post-test only, as it is not intended to measure student learning, but instead to look at the relationships between students understanding of rate of change and electric potential. (Allain, 2001)
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The latest versions of the RAPT, released in 2001, are versions A and B. Version A gives all the rate of change questions followed by all the electric potential questions. Version B gives a rate of change question followed by a similar electric potential question. The purpose of these two versions is to look at the difference in the way students answer the questions based on their order.
