Students' Versatility with Resistor-Capacitor Circuits

Abstract

It is observed that engineering students often fail to transfer their existing knowledge to unfamiliar situations. The research question considered in this paper asks whether students' knowledge of circuits with one resistor and one capacitor is versatile and transferable. The findings show that students have significant difficulty with unfamiliar circuit configurations. Presenting more appropriate conceptual models may be key in providing students with enough holistic technological knowledge to solve unfamiliar problems. Understanding how students perceive circuit diagrams may provide valuable information for the design of qualitative models targeted to enable versatile visualisation of the phenomena of resistor-capacitor circuits.