Students’ Misconceptions about Semiconductors and Use of Knowledge in Simulations

Abstract

Background Little research exists on students' misconceptions about semiconductors, why they form, and what role educational resources like simulations play in misconception formation. Research on misconceptions can help enhance student learning about semiconductors.Purpose (Hypothesis) This project sought to identify students' misconceptions about three semiconductor phenomena -diffusion, drift, and excitation -and to determine if prior knowledge, knowledge acquired from watching animated simulations, or both were related to students' misconceptions. We hypothesized that students would hold misconceptions about those phenomena and that students' prior knowledge and knowledge acquired from watching animated simulations would be associated with their misconceptions.Design/Method Forty-one engineering students completed an instrument that asked questions about three semiconductor phenomena after the students had observed the animated simulations. Responses were analyzed and coded using two frameworks: misconception and knowledge use. ResultsMisconceptions were prevalent for all three phenomena. Misconceptions were associated with use of incorrect prior knowledge, a combination of correct or incorrect prior knowledge, and the knowledge acquired from watching the animated simulations alone or in combination with correct and incorrect prior knowledge. Misconceptions indicated a lack of understanding of chemistry and physics concepts.Conclusions Findings indicate that students hold many misconceptions about semiconductor phenomena. These misconceptions were common among our participants. The knowledge acquired from the animated simulations alone or in combination with prior knowledge could reinforce or contribute to misconception formation. Our findings can guide instructors to use or create better simulations to aid student learning.

Shared Resources: Engineering Students' Emerging Group Understanding of Thermodynamic Work

“…We argue that attributing student learning or their misconceptions to features of a simulation tool leads educators to place too much reliance on the technology itself. Therefore, less than satisfactory learning gains naturally lead to conclusions that we need to invest in the costly development of more effective technologies (e.g., Nelson et al, ). Rather, in our study, we recognize a class environment in which an existing technology can be leveraged to become more effective.…”

“…Yet, we found that only a subset of students provided responses that fully aligned with the normatively correct explanations; for example, only approximately 40% correctly answered a summative question in the Thermodynamic Work IVL, where the correct answer involves mentioning net work done to the system. Similarly, Nelson et al (), who used animated simulations to demonstrate the microscopic phenomena of electrons in semiconductor materials, reported normatively correct answers for only approximately 20% of the student responses. Such results indicating student learning difficulties seem to align with the claim that misconceptions are persistent and robust (Chi, ).…”

“…Based on this point of view, learning is a process that restructures knowledge from the misconception into the normatively correct mental model. Through data from concept inventories and interviews based on similar questions, student misconceptions have been identified and instructional interventions developed to “repair” these misconceptions in engineering (e.g., Hamilton, Lesh, Lester, & Brilleslyper, ; Krause, Kelly, Corkins, & Tasooji, ; Nelson et al, ), and particularly in the thermal sciences (Miller, Streveler, Yang, & Santiago Román, ; Prince, Vigeant, & Nottis, ). Posner, Strike, Hewson, and Gertzog () propose that misconceptions can be repaired by eliciting students' mental models, confronting the students by presenting contradictory phenomena, thereby stimulating cognitive discomfort and forcing them to revise their mental models to accommodate the new phenomena.…”

Board 77: Visual Representations Guide Students’ Use of Conceptual Knowledge and Problem-solving Strategies

“…These findings of the context-dependent nature of comprehension align well with the knowledge in pieces perspective of conceptual change, which posits that students' conceptual knowledge is a collection of pieces that are cued depending on the context of the problem. While there is still considerable debate about whether conceptual knowledge is in pieces or more monolithic [2], [7], [26], [27], we based our project on the knowledge-in-pieces perspective based on its alignment with prior findings in the micro-level view of representations.…”

“…Students were often inconsistent in how they revealed their conceptual understanding across these different modalities. While many studies in the conceptual understanding literature have studied the structure of students' conceptual knowledge, these studies focus on introductory courses on mechanics [31], astronomy [6], heat [32] and circuits [33] with only a small number of recent studies in more advanced engineering topics such as shear stress [24], [34], motion in dynamic systems [35] and drift/diffusion [27].…”