Engineering Student Misconceptions about Rate and Accumulation Processes: Preliminary Evidence for the Development of the Rate and Accumulation Concept Inventory

This paper reports preliminary evidence that many engineering students possess robust misconceptions about rates of change in processes.Exploratory testing on this issue led to the development of the Rate and Accumulation Concept Inventory (RACI), which is intended to assess the extent and types of misconceptions about rate processes.Initial results of this instrument indicate the presence of multiple levels of misconceptions among sophomore level engineering students.