A concept inventory to probe student understanding of basic electronics

Abstract

We have developed a concept inventory that probes student understanding of basic electronics. The concept inventory consists of twenty-five multiple-choice questions that can be answered by a junior electrical engineering student in approximately ten minutes. Each entry in the inventory is written in language that is accessible to a literate public. The working hypothesis was that most of the students would be familiar with these concepts through exposure in lower division electrical engineering, calculus, and calculus-based physics coursework. In selecting the concepts, we drew upon the Dictionary of Cultural Literacy to validate that the majority of the concepts are truly essential to a broad grasp of popular science and technology. Our practice has been to administer the inventory at the beginning and end of the semester to cadres of students that enrolled in an analog electronics course. We will present data collected over the last two semesters to illustrate major misconceptions and significant gains obtained through the course.