Assessing the concepts of electricity and magnetism of science and engineering students

Abstract

This work is aimed to assess the performance of two groups of students from colleges of Science, Education and Engineering on the understanding of electricity and magnetism concepts. To conduct this assessment, the Electricity and Magnetism Conceptual Assessment (EMCA) test was implemented twice as a pre-test and a post-test for two calculus-based physics-2 courses offered at the Sultan Qaboos University in Oman in the Spring & Fall 2019 semesters. These courses cover the topics of electricity, magnetism and partly thermal physics. The normalized gains for both groups of students are in the medium gain category. The performance of genders in the EMCA is not statistically distinguishable. The students’ misconceptions are identified and compared with those obtained elsewhere.