Peer-Reviewed Journal Details
Mandatory Fields
Doughty, D., McLoughlin, L. and van Kampen, P.
2014
October
American Journal of Physics
What integration cues, and what cues integration in intermediate electromagnetism
Published
15 ()
Optional Fields
82
11
© 2014 American Association of Physics Teachers. We report on semi-quantitative research into students' difficulties with integration in an intermediate-level electromagnetism course with cohorts of about 50 students. We have found that before they enter the course, students view integration primarily as a process of evaluation, even though viewing integration as a summation process would be more fruitful. We confirm and quantify earlier results that recognizing dependency on a variable is a strong cue that prompts students to integrate and that various technical difficulties with integration prevent almost all students from getting a completely correct answer to a typical electromagnetism problem involving integration. We describe a teaching sequence that we have found useful in helping students address the difficulties we identified.
0002-9505
10.1119/1.4892613
Grant Details