Students' interpretation of the importance and difficulty of concepts in signals and systems

Two ongoing challenges facing instructors when designing courses are (1) do students identify/understand important concepts in the course, and (2) what makes concepts difficult for students to understand? In particular, do students see the relationship between the procedures taught and the fundamental concepts they support? In this study, we use interviews with 39 undergraduate engineering students to address these questions in the context of a sophomore-level continuous-time signals and systems course. Each student interviewed was asked which concept in the course was most difficult, which was most important, and why. Student responses regarding the concepts and the reasons were qualitatively analyzed, and a codebook was developed. The results of the coding provide broad insight into what factors make a particular concept difficult and/or important from the student perspective. We conjecture that general elements drawn from the results obtained here can be applied beyond signals and systems and across the engineering curriculum.