Analyzing student conceptual understanding of resistor networks using binary, descriptive, and computational questions

This paper presents a case-study assessing and analyzing student engagement with and responses to binary, descriptive, and computational questions testing the concepts underlying resistor networks (series and parallel combinations). The participants of the study were undergraduate students enrolled in a university in Pakistan. The majority of students struggled with the descriptive question, even when successfully answering the binary and computational ones, failed to build an expectation for the answer, and betrayed significant lack of conceptual understanding in the process. The data collected was also used to analyze the relative efficacy of the three questions as means of assessing conceptual understanding. The three questions were revealed to be uncorrelated and unlikely to be testing the same construct. The ability to answer the binary or computational question was observed to be divorced from a deeper understanding of the concepts involved.