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The past several years has seen increased interest in expanding physics education research (PER) studies to the two-year college (TYC) physics community. This interest is driven by the knowledge that while a significant portion of the students taking introductory physics courses do so at TYCs, those students are highly underrepresented in PER. The considerable teaching loads and lack of research support for TYC faculty make it difficult for TYC faculty to independently enact PER. Faculty outside of TYCs can build successful, productive, and equitable research partnerships with TYC faculty to alleviate these constraints. In this paper, we review TYC demographics that distinguish those students from populations traditionally studied in PER. We describe the challenges faced by TYC faculty in performing research as well as examples of successful research and scholarship of teaching and learning. Finally, we outline some successful TYC/PER partnerships and share initial recommendations that can inform TYC and four-year college faculty desiring to build effective and equitable PER partnerships. 

The Physics Inventory of Quantitative Literacy (PIQL) has been used to measure the development of students’ physics quantitative literacy in calculus-based introductory physics courses. Despite its effectiveness, issues persist regarding time constraints and potential memorization of items. We propose to split the PIQL into two shorter but statistically equivalent exams (PIQLets) in order to avoid these problems. Using a data set collected with the full PIQL, we created 480 theoretical PIQLet pairs containing different combinations of items. We provide evidence for the similarity of PIQLet pairs by calculating score differences, and comparing the distribution of item parameters calculated using item response theory. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of this approach for defining an equivalent pair of PIQLets using a limited data set from a single university. Additional analyses using a broader and more diverse data set will be required for more broadly applicable results.