Development of the Signals and Systems Concept Inventory (SSCI) Assessment Instrument
John R. Buck, Kathleen E. Wage, Margret A. Hjalmarson, and Jill K. Nelson
Abstract
Concept inventories play a growing role in assessing student
understanding in engineering curricula. A common application of
concept inventories is a pre/post- test assessment in a course. For
this reason, it is important to confirm the validity of any new
concept inventory, i.e., to verify that the inventory measures what it
is designed to assess. The Signals and Systems Concept Inventory
(SSCI) is a 25-question multiple-choice exam assessing core concepts
in undergraduate signals and systems courses. This paper presents two
analyses supporting the validity of the SSCI. The first analysis
compares the responses of 40 students to final exam questions with
their responses to related SSCI questions. This analysis finds
statistically-significant correlations between the SSCI and the final
exam for questions on convolution and Fourier transform
properties. The second analysis examines the interview responses of 18
students to SSCI questions on frequency-selective filtering and
convolution. The interviews suggest students have a strong
understanding of high and low frequency, have some understanding of
the relationship between time and frequency domains, but struggle to
interpret frequency responses. The interviews also suggest that many
students retain some conceptual understanding of convolution after
their memory of the convolution integral has faded.
© 2007 IEEE. The paper (PDF) appeared in Proceedings of the 37th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, pp. S1G1-S1G6, October 2007. This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.