The effect of visual analysis skills on conceptual understanding and problem-solving in electrical circuits

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of a supplementary visual analysis instructional unit on electrical circuit diagram simplification. More specifically, the study examined how this unit would affect students\u27 ability to recognize relationships of electrical components in a visually complex circuit diagram and how the instructional unit would affect students\u27 ability to describe circuit behaviors. The population for this quasi-experimental study was all students enrolled in two sections of the Introduction to Electrical Circuits (EET 214) course at Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN. The course EET 214 was selected for three reasons: (a) the course was designed to teach electrical circuit theory for beginners, (b) it had two sections, (c) both sections were taught by one instructor, and (d) the student body of the course consisted of majors from Industrial Technology, Mechanical Engineering Technology, and Computer Integrated Manufacturing Technology. One section of the course was selected as the experimental group and the other as the control group. A pretest was administered to both sections during the first week of the course. Following the pretest, the supplementary instructional unit was given to the experimental group. At the end of the fifth week of the course, both groups took a posttest. The test consisted of qualitative questions in order to examine the students\u27 conceptual understanding of electrical circuits. The study found that: (1) the students who received the supplementary instruction were able to identify the relationships among components of a visual complex electrical circuit more effectively, (2) the students were able to recognize the relationships more effectively when the diagrams are drawn linearly as opposed to drawn rectangularly, and (3) the students\u27 ability to describe the circuit behavior was not influenced by the visual analysis instruction