Abstract:

This study explores the conventional teaching of physics, addressing misconceptions of first-year engineering students on the basic concepts of force and motion. The study was carried out in two class of the 1st year of the degree course in agronomic engineering. It is well known that the correct understanding of the laws of mechanics requires a radical change in the way of thinking and the conventional physics teaching produces some change in the commonsense beliefs about and force and motion. With this work we try to identify misconceptions of force and motion that remain after the conventional teaching of these concepts.

A one-group pre-test/post-test design was used to determine the effect of the conventional teaching intervention on a given sample of students. The sample consists of two student groups: one from the academic year 2019-20 and the other from 2020-21. The students performed the pre-test before being taught any mechanics. The mechanics concepts were taught in four classes of two hours each, one class per week. The following week the students took the post test.

The normalized gain ⟨g⟩ and effect size Cohen's d will be used to quantify the student learning and to identify the persistent misconceptions about force and motion.

Keywords:

Misconceptions, engineering education, Motion, force.