How Electrical Engineering Technology Students Understand Concepts of Electricity. Comparison of Misconceptions of Freshmen, Sophomores, and Seniors

Effective instruction in Engineering and Technology requires knowledge of how students understand or lack understanding of key concepts in these disciplines. Incorrect mental models, deeply rooted in everyday experience, can significantly affect student learning. Evidence suggests that students who learn new material may already have some understanding and preconceptions about the new concepts. Misconceptions about electricity of novice students (college freshmen and first-semester sophomores) were analyzed and compared to the misconceptions of senior students. The study targeted: (1) correlation between student academic success (grades) and student misconceptions, and (2) understanding how student mental models and misconceptions change with increasing levels of competency and expertise during students’ progression from the freshman to senior level. Non-equivalent groups of 20 novices and 22 seniors participated in this study. The mixedmethods research methodology included two phases. In the quantitative phase all students responded to the Concept Inventory [1] questions. During the qualitative phase 8 novices and 8 seniors were interviewed and responded to open-ended questions about their understanding of electricity. The two most interesting and unexpected results deserve attention. First, in the novice group negative correlation between grades and misconceptions was stronger than in the senior group. Incorrect understanding of electricity in the senior group is frequently disguised by welldeveloped technical vocabulary. Even the brightest high-GPA students had numerous mistaken beliefs. The other unexpected result was that, despite significant improvements in understanding of electricity, seniors had more misconceptions (and were more confused) than novices about physical and fundamental electrical phenomena, such as ‘charge’ or ‘electrical field’. Also, the two most widespread analogies among the students were between ‘water flow’ and electrical current, and electricity is a ‘substance-that-can-be-used-up’. Identified as the most popular mental models, these analogies remained frequently used from the novice to senior levels.