Tapping into Juniors’ Understanding of E&M: The Colorado Upper‐Division Electrostatics (CUE) Diagnostic

As part of an effort to systematically improve our junior‐level E&M I course, we are developing a tool to assess student learning of E&M concepts at the upper‐division. Along with a faculty working group, we established a list of learning goals for the course that, with student observations and interviews, served as a guide in creating the Colorado Upper‐Division Electrostatics (CUE) assessment. The result is a 17‐question open‐ended post‐test (with an optional 7‐question pre‐test) diagnostic, and accompanying grading rubric. We present the preliminary validation of the instrument and rubric, plus results from 226 students in 4 semesters at the University of Colorado, and 4 additional universities.