SSCI Overview

The Signals and Systems Concept Inventory (SSCI) is a 25 question multiple-choice exam designed to assess students' understanding of core concepts taught in undergraduate linear signals and systems courses, which are an integral part of electrical and computer engineering curricula. The SSCI emphasizes conceptual understanding over computational mechanics, and contains distractors, or incorrect answers, designed to capture common student misconceptions. There are separate versions for continuous time and discrete time topics. To date the SSCI has been tested on over 2250 students at 17 schools. In 2008 it was translated into Spanish and Chinese.

SSCI Development

The SSCI is one of several concept inventory exams whose initial development was funded by the National Science Foundation through the Foundation Coalition in response to a growing need for assessment tools for the undergraduate engineering curricula. One approach to measuring student learning is to administer a standardized conceptual exam as both a pre-test and a post-test and compute the gain during the semester. This technique can be used to assess the effectiveness of various pedagogical techniques as well as curriculum reform efforts. Our efforts in developing the SSCI were inspired by the Force Concept Inventory developed by Hestenes et al. to measure students' understanding of Newtonian physics.

2005-2009 Study

With funding from the National Science Foundation Assessment of Student Achievement program, we are continuing the development of the SSCI. The goals of the current study are as follows:

  • Collect SSCI performance, academic, demographic data
  • Verify construct and content validity and reliability
  • Compile gain statistics for S&S courses
  • Refine the CT and DT versions of the SSCI
  • Disseminate the exams and results of the study
To achieve these goals, we are working with a development team of S&S instructors at twelve schools: Duke, Embry-Riddle, George Mason, Marquette, Notre Dame, Rice, Rose Hulman, Santa Clara, UC Berkeley, UT-El Paso, UMass Dartmouth, and Wyoming. In addition to administering the SSCI at these schools, we are also conducting detailed interviews with S&S students at George Mason University and UMass Dartmouth.

SSCI Workshop

A workshop was presented at the IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference on October 22, 2008 in Saratoga Springs, NY.

Workshop Abstract
Are you looking for a way to assess students' conceptual understanding in signals and systems courses? Are you trying to write a concept inventory for an upper level engineering course and are curious to see how other instructors have approached this challenge? Are you interested in what a concept inventory assessment can tell you about student understanding in your engineering courses? This workshop will describe the design, development and validation of the Signals and Systems Concept Inventory (SSCI). The SSCI is a 25 question multiple-choice exam that covers the core concepts in common signals and systems courses in the ECE curriculum. The target audience for the workshop are instructors from signals and systems courses and also instructors interested in concept inventory development. The data analysis techniques presented generalize to any concept inventory, not only the SSCI, thus the workshop will benefit any faculty interested in what a concept inventory can tell them about the conceptual understanding of students in their courses.

Additional information

For further details about the SSCI study or to obtain copies of the exams, email John Buck (johnbuck [at] ieee.org) or Kathleen Wage (k.e.wage [at] ieee.org).