This study used eye-tracking technology to investigate students’ visual attention while taking the
Force Concept Inventory (FCI) in a web-based interface. Eighty nine university students were
randomly selected into a pre-test group and a post-test group. Students took the 30-question FCI on
a computer equipped with an eye-tracker. There were seven weeks of instruction between the pre- and
post-test data collection. Students’ performance on the FCI improved significantly from pre-test to
post-test. Meanwhile, the eye-tracking results reveal that the time students spent on taking the FCI
test was not affected by student performance and did not change from pre-test to post-test. Analysis
of students’ attention to answer choices shows that on the pre-test students primarily focused on
the naïve choices and ignored the expert choices. On the post-test, although students had shifted
their primary attention to the expert choices, they still kept a high level of attention to the
naïve c…