Using Analogy to Enhance Understanding of Electrical Circuits

When teaching has both a visual dimension and auditory one, the information is easily delivered to students. Students, who can not imagine the behavior of electrical circuits, have difficulty, understanding electrical circuits behavior. These difficulties stem from the strain in visualizing the actual behavior of electrical circuits. Visualization constitutes an important part of learning process when instructors try helping students understand what is happening inside electrical circuits and explaining its concepts.. In this paper, we introduce multimedia-based analogy as a remedy approach for this difficulty. Multimedia based analogy aims to visualize how electric circuits operate, and thus help the student in understanding electrical circuit principles. By the aid of multimedia, we explore the analogy concepts between the electrical system and other systems such as mechanical and hydraulic systems to help students gain a good understanding of the dynamic and static behaviors of electrical circuit. A computer-based Instruction (CBI) has been developed with analogies. Every module in the curriculum has analogies to help students understanding the curriculum concepts