written by Steven J. Pollock, Stephanie Viola Chasteen, Edward Kinney, and Michael Dubson
supported by the National Science Foundation
published by the Science Education Initiative

This is a collection of student difficulties identified in a junior-level Electricity and Magnetism course during four semesters of a curriculum transformation project.  These resource documents present the research findings of this project that resulted from: interviews with students using "think-aloud" protocol as they worked through problems or diagrammed their understanding using concept maps; observations during help sessions and tutorials; student questions during lecture; student performance on concept tests / clicker questions; student performance on homework and exams; and student performance on the conceptual assessment developed for the course.

In addition to student difficulties, these documents include the learning goals associated with each topic and class activities developed by other institutions to address that topic.  Those who wish to learn more about these activities activities should steven.pollock@colorado.edu.

This material was developed as part of a education research-based course transformation for junior level E&M. All of the resources developed for this course are available, sorted by individual topic and type, at http://www.compadre.org/psrc/items/Relations.cfm?ID=7891.

• Download SEI-EMStudentDiff.pdf - 60kb Adobe PDF Document

Last Modified June 10, 2010

This zip archive contains the results of research on student difficulties in junior level E&M. Materials are in Word format.

• Download All-Resource-Documents.zip - 745kb Compressed File

Published June 6, 2010
Last Modified March 2, 2016

This file has previous versions.

This zip archive contains the results of research on student difficulties in junior level E&M. Materials are in pdf format.

• Download All-Resource-Documents-PDF.zip - 1381kb Compressed File

Published June 6, 2010
Last Modified March 2, 2016

This file has previous versions.