Pre- and post-course assessment designed for advanced Electricity and Magnetism (E&M) courses

We have begun developing a pre- and post-course assessment designed for advanced Electricity and Magnetism (E&M) courses to evaluate students' conceptual understanding of selected E&M topics, as a basis for assembling a comprehensive multiple-choice assessment tool. Throughout the Spring 2025 term, students were given 48 true/false conceptual questions along with open-ended responses to explain their answers. The responses were then used to identify which concepts proved most problematic for students in order to design meaningful assessment items for testing those concepts, such as creating distractor answer choices. We will present selected questions, including the methods of interpreting the open-ended answers into effective multiple-choice responses. We will also discuss plans for validating the assessment items moving forward. We hope that the assessment tool will allow instructors to gain insight into students' prior and post-course knowledge, identify areas of misunderstanding that persist throughout the course, and test the effects of differing lecture styles. Additionally, the assessment tool may reinforce students' confidence in their learning, as improvements in post-test performance offer tangible evidence of their growth.