Student Misconceptions in Signals and Systems and their Origins - Part II

We report on our investigation of student misconceptions and their origins within the Signals and Systems module taught in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This study is a sequel to an earlier paper in which we discussed our findings on student conceptions and reasoning regarding the behavior of linear, time-invariant electrical circuits. In this paper, we report our findings on student understanding of the fundamental topics involved in the study of continuous-time linear, time-invariant systems. During spring term 2003, we conducted clinical interviews for our data gathering. Fifty-one students enrolled in Signals and Systems volunteered to take part in this study. In our analysis, we identified the typical student difficulties and misconceptions, and the mathematical cognitive resources underlying these misconceptions. In this paper, we report on our results and how they could inform the development of instructional material and methods that support student learning