Student usage of auto-graded activities in a web-based circuit analysis textbook

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the use of auto-graded circuits analysis problems, called challenge activities, by over 800 students across 8 courses in 4 universities to understand metrics such as: the average completion rate, the average time spent on each activity, and the average number of attempts per problem level. We also identify the percentage of students that struggle, and the percentage of students that gave up. From our analysis we’ve found the activities around the topics of maximum power transfer, nodal equations, Norton equivalents, and series and parallel resistors to be the hardest due to math requirements and the need to identify series and parallel circuit elements.