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In the realm of science education, traditional teaching methods face challenges in catering to diverse learning preferences. This study investigates the efficacy of Khan Academy Videos (KAVs) in improving educational quality, specifically in rural thermodynamics instruction. The research involved 88 students and one teacher, with one group taught using traditional methods (control group [CG]) and the other using KAVs (experimental group [EG]). Results show significant improvements in learning outcomes and engagement with KAV integration, with EG scores improving by 61% compared to 31% in the CG. Pre-tests and post-tests were conducted to establish baseline understanding and measure academic performance, while a mixed-method approach analyzed results and feedback. Findings indicate that KAV integration positively influences student performance, offering valuable enhancements for resource-limited rural schools. This study underscores the transformative potential of KAV-integrated teaching in addressing educational challenges and elevating teaching quality.

We use the Survey of Thermodynamic Processes and First and Second Laws-Long, a research-based survey instrument with 78 items at the level of introductory physics, to investigate introductory and advanced students' difficulties with internal energy, work, and heat transfer. We present analysis of data from 12 different introductory and advanced physics classes at four different higher education public institutions in the U.S. in which the survey was administered in person to more than 1000 students. We find that not only introductory but also advanced physics students have many common difficulties with these introductory thermodynamic concepts after traditional lecture-based instruction in relevant concepts. We utilize a wide variety of problem types and contexts and our sample includes large numbers of introductory algebra-based, calculus-based, and advanced students. Some of our findings are consistent with prior research in this area, but others expand upon them and reveal previously unreported aspects of students' thinking. Findings related to common difficulties of students before and after traditional lecture-based instruction in college physics courses can help instructors of these courses plan instruction and curricula to improve student understanding. These findings can also be valuable for developing effective research-based curricula and pedagogies to address student difficulties and help students develop a functional understanding of these fundamental thermodynamic concepts.

Thermodynamic processes are often presented in so called P-V diagrams and the processes are often isobaric, isochoric, isothermal, and adiabatic. The purpose of the qualitative research reported here was to explore students' reasoning and interpretation of P-V diagrams that were presented by the help of GeoGebra. The research group had 15 students and the control group had 12 students. The control group were not given any dynamical explanation of the PV diagrams but were taught with static images in the same text book as the research group. The thermodynamics in Physics 1 at the Swedish gymnasium level is normally done within 2 weeks. We allocated 3 weeks and 10 hours for the thermodynamics to be taught and then gave all 27 students a short test. At the end of the Physics 1 course, we also gave a test with two questions from the thermodynamics. It seems that the students who were given the opportunity to dynamically change the content of the PV diagram benefit more from the teaching compared to the control group.

Physical and virtual labs have unique capabilities that can influence how students learn from them. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of physical and virtual manipulatives on students' learning of heat and temperature and to examine the influence of various combinations of physical and virtual manipulatives. A total of 205 participants were divided into four groups: only physical manipulatives, only virtual manipulatives, physical-virtual manipulatives, and virtual-physical manipulatives. Students' knowledge acquisition was tested using Pretest--Post-test design. The results showed that physical and virtual manipulatives are as effective in facilitating students' learning of state changes, but virtual manipulatives are more beneficial to students' learning of thermal expansion and contraction than physical manipulatives are. Physical-virtual manipulatives are more effective than virtual-physical manipulatives or physical manipulatives alone are to promote students' learning of heat and temperature, but this effect is similar to that of virtual manipulatives alone. The results suggest that virtual laboratories can effectively model abstract concepts. The better effect of the physical-virtual operation sequence on learning does not depend on whether the two types of experiments are combined or on the sequence of operations but on the type of experiment when its advantages actually contribute to learning.

Thermodynamics is one of the most complex topics in chemistry. Cognitive Load Theory claims that the complexity of a subject is mainly due to element interactivity - how many elements an individual must organise simultaneously in her/his working memory to master a topic. The simultaneous processing of various chemistry and mathematics concepts to learn thermodynamics puts a strain on the working memory capacity of the learner. Accordingly, what kind of change occurs in a learner's cognitive processes according to the level of element interactivity is an issue that needs to be investigated. The aim of this study is to reveal the basic indicators of element interactivity and investigate the effects of instructional design on understanding subjects with different element interactivity levels. With this objective in mind, educational software comprising eight distinct sessions for instructional design was developed in accordance with the Cognitive Load Theory. The sample consisted of 37 freshmen who were taking classes in the Chemistry Department of a public university in Turkey. The instructional design was implemented with the experimental group while the control group followed the lecturer's instructional design. The results indicate that, in terms of the cognitive load in the learning process, the study time and the learning at the retention and transfer level are among the basic indicators of the element interactivity. This study also determined that the instructional design that is developed according to Cognitive Load Theory can provide effective learning at the retention and transfer levels in subjects with high element interactivity.

In this article we find the thermodynamics of some large N particles systems and some small N particles classical systems using micro canonical ensemble. Small N particle systems are seldom done in textbooks, since statistical mechanics(SM) systems work for large N systems. We show that small N systems will help the students to get an insight about the phase space and also the computation of microstates.

After waiting in a long line for your favourite cup of coffee, you finally sit down with your mug and find that the coffee is still scalding hot! How long do you need to wait before you can enjoy it? Once it cools enough, how much time do you have to enjoy it? Are there ways to speed up the process? These questions motivate the presented modelling scenario about tracking the temperature of a cup of coffee as it cools. Students are put in the role of an inquisitive coffee enthusiast who does their due diligence in preventing burns and carefully experimenting on their coffee so that they, and others to come, can enjoy that perfect cup. They identify their assumptions and interventions before developing model differential equations for each case, which force discontinuities on the derivative and even on the solution itself. Being familiar with basic Laplace transforms and learning key properties of the unit step and unit impulse functions, they solve these differential equations and compare the interval of time when the coffee will be at its peak level of enjoyment. This paper includes an implementation guide, grading rubric, example solutions, and example assessment questions.

Background: Undergraduate students consistently struggle with mastering concepts related to thermodynamics. Prior work has shown that haptic technology and intensive hands-on workshops help improve learning outcomes relative to traditional lecture-based thermodynamics instruction. The current study takes a more feasible approach to improving thermal understanding by incorporating simple mechanical objects into individual problem-solving exercises. Purpose/Hypotheses: This study tests the impact of simple mechanical objects on learning outcomes (specifically, problem-solving performance and conceptual understanding) for third-year undergraduate engineering students in a thermodynamics course across a semester. Design/Method: During the semester, 119 engineering students in two sections of an undergraduate thermodynamics course completed three 15-min, self-guided problem-solving tasks, one section without and the other with a simple and relevant physical object. Performance on the tasks and improvements in thermodynamics comprehension (measured via Thermal and Transport Concept Inventory scores) were compared between the two sections. Results: Students who had a simple, relevant object available to solve three thermodynamics problems consistently outperformed their counterparts without objects, although only to statistical significance when examining the simple effects for the third problem. At the end of the semester, students who had completed the tasks with the objects displayed significantly greater improvements in thermodynamics comprehension than their peers without the relevant object. Higher mechanical aptitude facilitated the beneficial effect of object availability on comprehension improvements. Conclusion: Findings suggest that the incorporation of simple mechanical objects into active learning exercises in thermodynamics curricula could facilitate student learning in thermodynamics and potentially other abstract domains.

Laboratory learning forms a significant and integral part of engineering education, wherein students develop technical, collaborative, enquiry, and observation skills that go beyond theoretical studies. Engineering is inherently a practice-based profession, and consequently, laboratory work has been inseparable for engineering curricula. However, there is evidence suggesting that students encounter cognitive or information overload during modern laboratory classes, leading to reduced likelihoods of effectively achieving intended learning outcomes, as specified by the cognitive load theory. This article investigates how pre-lab online learning resources can be utilised to effectively manage cognitive load of engineering students, in the context of thermodynamics education. Qualitative and quantitative data have been collected from students as well as teaching staff on a range of parameters such as student preparedness, confidence levels, degree of engagement, and understanding. The findings of the study indicate that efficient student preparedness through pre-lab online resources can be utilised to effectively manage cognitive load of engineering students, leading to increased levels of understanding, preparedness, and confidence. It can be observed that there are influences from factors such as the quality of pre-lab resources and degree of engagement.

We describe the components and implementation of an activity for multivariable calculus featuring applications to the field of chemistry. This activity focuses on the isobaric thermal expansion coefficient found using partial differentiation of the volume of an ideal gas with respect to temperature as pressure is held constant. Broader goals of this activity include enhancing calculus conceptual understanding, encouraging further interdisciplinary study and exploration, and cultivating mathematicians and scientists with broader and deeper backgrounds.

Statistical mechanics has received limited attention in physics education research and remains a relatively underrepresented topic even in research on upper-division physics courses. The purpose of this study was to explore potential challenges that physics students encounter when they solve statistical mechanics problems in groups. Adopting a grounded approach, we video recorded and analyzed nine small student groups engaging in collaborative problem solving on the topic. The analysis involved iterative thematic coding, which gave rise to ten emergent categories of challenges. These were later divided into two broad groupings: "challenges with concepts" and "challenges with problem-solving strategies." In the first grouping, we list seven identified categories related to the concepts of macrostates and microstates, distinguishable and indistinguishable particles, temperature, entropy, energy, equilibrium, heat bath, the Boltzmann distribution, and the partition function. In the second grouping, we list three categories related to the inappropriate application of common relations, difficulty managing tensions between calculated results and qualitative reasoning, and coming up with definitions of new and inconsistent concepts. Some of our findings are supported by existing research on the topic, and others are previously unreported. Based on our findings, we propose that future research should investigate the relations between the identified challenges on one hand, and students' epistemological framing, reasoning, and use of multiple representations on the other. Finally, we suggest that teachers should spend time engaging students in a conceptual discussion of the central ideas of statistical mechanics, motivating the choice and pointing out limitations of commonly used toy models, and linking course content to real-world phenomena.

We explored chemical engineering students' approaches to learning, study-related burnout, and perceptions of peer and self-assessment in a challenging physical chemistry thermodynamics course. Cluster analysis revealed three learning profiles based on students' approaches to learning: students who scored high in both organised studying and the deep approach to learning, students who scored high in the unreflective approach to learning, and students who scored high in all three approaches. According to our findings, students who employed deep learning strategies and managed their time carefully experience the least study-related burnout. These students also felt more efficacious when participating in assessment and had fever negative experiences of both peer and self-assessment. Consequently, physical chemistry educators should adopt practices that facilitate a deeper approach to learning, including paying careful attention to course workload and utilising teaching methodologies that can foster the deep approach like peer and self-assessment.

One of the obstacles that occur in Chemistry learning is low student motivation due to monotonous media. Another thing that currently becomes an obstacle is the COVID-19 pandemic which limits face-to-face learning. However, Chemistry practicum learning in the laboratory is difficult to carry out at students' homes. The purpose of the study is to develop a virtual laboratory, the validity and effectiveness of which are measured, to increase students' understanding and motivation in Chemistry, the topic of exothermic and endothermic reactions. The 4D model is used in the development of learning media in the form of a virtual laboratory. The validity of virtual laboratory products is confirmed by media experts and material experts in their fields. Product effectiveness was measured using a posttest-only control group design with two groups of students involving 63 students. Data collection was carried out through questionnaires, tests, and interviews, with descriptive analysis for the results of validation of the learning media and pilot test and t-tests for testing the effectiveness of virtual laboratories. The results showed that the virtual laboratory is easy to use and has feedback at the end of the practicum simulation so that the virtual laboratory can be applied as a valid and effective learning media in increasing student understanding and motivation.

The case study-based module on chemical thermodynamics course (ideal and real gases) was developed to fulfill the needs of undergraduate students in online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study was to test feasibility of case study-based module. The case study-based module refers to the 4D model (define, design, develop, and disseminate) by integrating the one group pretest-posttest design at the develop stage. The feasibility of the module was measured through validity, practicality and effectiveness using validation sheet, evaluation test sheet and questionnaire sheet. Data were analyzed descriptively, quantitatively (Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test) and qualitatively. The case study-based module was suitable for one of learning tools, which was proven by the findings that (1) meets valid and reliable criteria, (2) meets practical criteria with support for general achievements students' very positive response to the aspects of module (construction, material, motivation and case study), and (3) meets the effective criteria by increasing the average score pretest-posttest in medium category which contains the cognitive level of analyze-C4, evaluate-C5, and create-C6. The implication of development case study-based module can facilitate students in online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic so that they will successfully reach the course learning outcomes of Chemical Thermodynamics, which includes mastery of knowledge about main principles of thermodynamics, ability to solve science and technology problems, ability to use information and communication technology based learning resources, make decisions based on the relationship of concepts with laboratory activities, and practice responsibility.

An exploratory study was to determine the effectiveness of discussion sessions as a teaching strategy of thermodynamics in basic physical chemistry of fundamental concepts in this area as spontaneity by explaining students according to their ideas. A previously validated questionnaire was used as an instrument on thermochemistry, enthalpies of bonding, and Gibbs function. The performance of the students who participated in the intervention was compared with that of a control group to which the afore mentioned teaching strategy was not applied. The students of the intervened group explained with a higher academic level the concept of spontaneity than those of the control group reaching the level of the development of the process of effective chemical reasoning (DECRP) of the taxonomy of barrow and bloom.

Analogies can be powerful teaching tools because they can make new material intelligible to students by comparing it to material that is already familiar. In assisting students to understand chemistry concepts, teachers occasionally use analogies. These analogies are believed to help the students to structure the new knowledge and they are considered to be especially useful for topics of an abstract or submicroscopic nature. However, analogies have also been identified as a factor in the students' misunderstanding of chemical concepts. By a functional analogical approach constructed onto the two fundamental concepts (learning and the work in thermodynamics) in this study, the presentation of the similarities between the interactive nature of learning and the requirements enabling a mechanical change such as the reversible expansion is aimed.

This paper seeks to evaluate learning based on the competency approach, taking a didactic experience to evaluate a possible improvement in the ability to solve problems and for autonomous learning in general. For the didactic development, the theme "gases" was taken, which is generally enunciated: Corpuscular kinetic theory of matter; State variables of a gas: P, V, T; Absolute temperature; General and State Equation of Ideal Gases Dalton's Law or Law of Partial Pressures; Ideal Gases and Real Gases; Van der Waals equation. For this purpose, the AIRBAG systems, and the determination of the normal molar volume of a gas are taken as the object of study.

The nowadays European educational framework boosts applying the learned theoretical concepts to real situations. Hence, practice sessions are key resources to present students direct applications of the theoretical concepts shown in class. Thus, developing new educational equipment and practice sessions oriented to bringing theoretical knowledge closer to practice should be one of the objectives of teachers. The present work describes a solution proposed by lectures of two Spanish universities looking to increase the knowledge of their engineering students. Along the years, these docents have noticed the lack of connection between the theoretical and practical knowledge among their students, drastically harming their learning procedure. Thus, in order to deepen into practical learning, a teaching methodology involving low-cost prototypes of vapor compression systems and a gamification method to help the students understand the concepts is proposed. The proposed methodology is expected to make a big positive impact on the results obtained by the students, taking into account the preliminary results reached.

Teaching upper division statistical physics can often be clouded by the theory and complex examples used. To better help students appreciate the fundamental statistical concepts and how they are connected to thermodynamic principles this paper suggests using a simple abstract model. Using Atkins' Model students can see these ideas clearly connected and have a straightforward reference to help understand the behavior of more complicated cases.

Concepts relating to enzymes and energy are central to understanding chemical and biological processes at the molecular level. Student learning of these crosscutting concepts can be challenging, so it is important to identify misconceptions and remediate them early, especially in introductory classes. Here we describe an activity in which undergraduate introductory biology students timed themselves crushing pieces of cereal to simulate and quantify the progress of an enzymatic reaction in the presence of competitive and noncompetitive inhibitors, and we asked students to connect the cereal analogy to concepts of thermodynamics. We developed an assessment and short surveys to evaluate the impact of the activity and to identify persistent misconceptions. Measurable improvements of assessment scores and qualitative student survey responses demonstrate the value of including a hands-on activity along with other modes of instruction.

Pregraduate students often have low success expectations toward their thermodynamics courses, which are often considered too abstract and remarkably difficult to understand. For this reason, they may not even try to reach any level of comprehension while settling for reproducing mathematical calculations and memorizing definitions to pass the exams. Traditional lectures on thermodynamics, focusing on mathematical deductions while neglecting the qualitative characterization of the concepts behind the equations, do not help in this respect. Aiming at a change in the teaching practice and focused on the second law of thermodynamics, the main goals of this work are to characterize the way of reasoning of the expert; to present a review on the most important learning difficulties encountered by students and categorize them into three groups: the disregard of qualitative understanding, the inherent conceptual difficulties, and those related to the students' previous knowledge; and to propose some suitable teaching practices to assist instructors in this difficult but rewarding task.

A significant amount of energy in the form of heat is lost in industrial processes once it is used in specific processes. Among different technologies, high-temperature heat pumps (HTHP) are a valuable method of recovering low-temperature waste heat in the industry in a very efficient way that can be activated using clean electricity. As a recently investigated technology, they are not yet spread in industrial processes, where traditional technologies are preferred. Therefore, this work shows an HTHP computer program (named HeatPack) to be used as a simulator by the university or technical students of courses included in applied thermodynamics engineering. This interactive and user-friendly platform allows the modification of different operating and design parameters and the working fluid. As outputs, the program provides the rest of the operating parameters and the energy performance of the cycle (quantified by the coefficient of performance, COP). The proposed HTHP and a gas boiler are compared by the program and the energetic, carbon footprint, and economic savings are displayed. Students, as the main target of users of the program, can observe how this technology can provide benefits. For instance, emission reductions in comparison with fossil fuel-based boilers, under which situation the energy performance of the HTHP is higher, and which alternative low global warming potential (GWP) refrigerants can provide more advantages. In addition to the educational use, this software can be used to design and study the integration of HTHPs in existing industrial needs to evaluate the feasibility.

This study investigated the introduction of the second law of thermodynamics using the Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) (semantic waves) among first year chemistry students. The aim of the study was to investigate the extent LTC (semantic waves) reduce the entropy concept's complexity and abstractness when introducing the second law of thermodynamics. A purposive sampling technique was used to sample participants from the accessible population. A sample of two hundred (n = 200) first-year chemistry students was chosen at a public university in South Africa. The study adopted a mixed-method research design. Data were collected using an Introductory Second Law of Thermodynamics Questionnaire (ISLTQ) and semi-structured interviews. Creating semantic waves during the lectures left many students in the trough of the sinusoidal wave of abstractness and complexity. Ranking the concepts related to entropy showed that many students knew the hierarchical order of the concepts. However, the interviews revealed that students tended to link entropy to the spread of particles instead of energy. The findings of this study are diagnostic and they assist module designers in determining the level of abstraction and complexity students face when introducing the second law of thermodynamics.

Conventional teaching about the law of conservation of mechanical energy (LCME) often results with students trying to solve problems by remembering similar problems they already covered in classes. Consequently, many students fail to transfer their knowledge to simplest real-life problems. Therefore, a pre-test-post-test quasi-experiment was conducted to evaluate the effects of an alternative, system-based approach to teaching about LCME. The study included 70 upper-secondary students from the First Bosniak Gymnasium Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Firstly, all students learned about energy in a conventional way. Then they wrote a test on LCME and had three additional hours of teaching about this topic, where one group of students learned in line with the forces-variant of the system approach (e.g., discussing conservative and non-conservative forces) and the other group with the process-variant of the same approach (e.g., discussing system's states and processes like in thermodynamics). For both variants, only three hours of system-based teaching proved to substantially improve the students' level of LCME understanding compared to the level of understanding they had after conventional teaching. It follows that the system approach may work well at the upper-secondary level, if it is introduced through the scaffolding-and-fading technique.

The aim of this study is to examine the "Knowledge of Student Understanding (KSU) of pre-service science teachers on "Heat and Temperature" topics. The sample of the research consists of 268 pre-service teachers studying at the 4th grade in the science teaching program of five different universities in Turkey. This research is a case study. The data of the study are collected with "Student Thinking Comprehension Test" and "Interview Form". "Scoring Rubrics for Knowledge of Student Thinking" and "Rubric for Analysis of Interviews" are used for the analysis of data. The data of the research are analyzed descriptively on the basis of these rubrics. The results of the study reveal that the vast majority of pre-service science teachers cannot effectively diagnose the student's inaccurate knowledge that emerges in solving specific problems in Heat and Temperature? topics. In addition, it is shown that the majority of pre-service science teachers have a little knowledge regarding the difficulties and limitations of students while learning "Heat and Temperature" subjects. According to these results, the KSU of the pre-service science teachers in "Heat and Temperature" topics is insufficient in the process of starting their profession.

This study investigates the preservice elementary teachers' ability to use the components of an argument structure on a given science topic as well as the quality of the developed argument during their sophomore and senior year. In doing so, the study also aimed to discuss the effect of teacher education programs on the development of argumentation skills of students over two years. A qualitative research approach was applied. The data were collected from the same participants at the end of their second and fourth years through having them discuss different generic frameworks. The argumentative discourses were analyzed in four stages. The scientific argumentations' overall quality was at low-level. The participants' claims were generally established without using data and warrants. They failed to transfer their scientific knowledge into discussion using qualifiers and rebuttals. The quality of the data, claim, and warrants were insufficient and included misconceptions. The teacher education program increased the students' scientific knowledge to some extent. Courses with more argumentation-based discussions could help students to increase the quality of their argument and their capabilities to use components of an argument structure.

This study aimed to determine the relationships that prospective science teachers have established between thermodynamics and environmental problems. The study was conducted with the case study method. The sample consisted of 74 senior prospective science teachers selected by purposive sampling and studied in Science Teaching Department in the faculty of education of a state university in Turkey in the spring semester of the 2018-2019 academic year. The data collection tool consisted of two parts: The first part included four open-ended questions. It was the questionnaire in which the prospective science teachers were asked to explain the laws of thermodynamics. In the second part, eleven open-ended questions were expected to be explained the given environmental problems by the laws of thermodynamics. As a result of the study, prospective science teachers were found to have difficulty applying thermodynamics laws to daily events or environmental problems.

The achievement of a proper conceptual change is a challenge for students since there are some constraint-based interactions including different ontological categories with the well-known dichotomy of matter or process. To mitigate this state of affairs, more instructional sequences with pedagogical approaches are needed because many students, regardless of their grade or academic background, incline to see science conceptions with emergent processes as an ontological matter. In this regard, compared to the existing ones, a newly-introduced model called Common Knowledge Construction Model (CKCM) is likely to leverage student learning. The purpose of the study was to investigate the possible impact of CKCM on students' understanding of heat transfer. The study had a pretest-post-test, pre-experimental research design based on qualitative data. The participants of the study comprised a total of 30 sixth grade students selected by convenience sampling model at a state school located in the south-east of Turkey. The data were collected via a semi-structured questionnaire consisting of five open-ended questions, and analyzed using coding method of the qualitative data analysis. The results revealed that majority of the participant students explicated their understandings of heat transfer with less alternative conceptions. The results also showed some improvements in students' understanding of heat transfer via the aforementioned teaching model. [Note: The page range (114-136) shown on the PDF is incorrect. The correct page range for this article is p114-135.]

The Arduino microcontroller is currently one of the favorite tools of makers, and many teachers have used it in teaching or experiments. In addition, light-emitting diode (LED) smart lighting is the worldwide trend in lighting. There are many teaching demonstrations or applications of color addition using LEDs. Furthermore, the Internet of Things (IoT) is a popular emerging technology today, and the sensor is the most important component in the perception layer of the IoT, which makes teaching, research, or application related to sensors very important. Therefore, this study shows that an Arduino microcontroller can be used as an experimental setup for the teaching of light color mixing, light intensity detection, and ambient temperature sensing via a tricolor (red, green, and blue [RGB]) LED and two types of sensors: photoresistors and thermistors. The setup has intuitive, concrete, and multifunctional features, and is expandable, which is different from the typical experimental setup designed for only a single specific purpose. It is also suitable for students learning about light color mixing and sensor-related physics course experiments or demonstrations, whether they be in high school or college.

How is it possible to create and continuously improve a quality learning environment for our students? We present our one-year course on engineering thermodynamics as a case study in which we investigate the learning environment based on a competency model from the students' perspective. Based on the analysis of our course structure and exam design, as well as a survey among students on their learning preferences, we propose several strategies to support student learning.

This study adds to the growing body of research on laboratory work. The study involves four pairs of students in a university introductory calorimetry lab of which two pairs, the IR-pairs (infrared camerapairs), were given access to infrared cameras to use however they liked during their course lab work. Two other pairs, the T-pairs (thermometer-pairs), were not given access to infrared cameras during their course lab work. The IR-pairs were video recorded when they chose to use the IR cameras and the T-pairs were video-recorded during the corresponding sequences. Additionally, all pairs participated in a modified lab after their course lab, in which the pairs had access to IR cameras and were presented with the same phenomena although with equipment modified to better accommodate for the use of IR cameras (thin plastic cups were used instead of calorimeters). Students' practice, communication and reasoning was studied to explore how the IR cameras affect students' activity. The results show that the access to IR cameras led to a reasoning focused on a macroscopic level of chemistry knowledge, involving heat transfer to the surrounding and measurement errors, and that the lab practice of most of the students was continuous (rather than intermittent) when they had access to IR cameras. We conclude by arguing that the access to IR cameras affects students' conceptual and epistemological framing of the lab, i.e. that the students perceive the lab activity differently when they get access to IR cameras (both in a conceptual and epistemological sense). As an implication for teaching, we suggest that giving students access to IR cameras in a chemistry lab may be a way to introduce flexibility in the degree of openness of the lab.

The limited capabilities of teaching laboratories, combined with an increasing number of students enrolled in university, require constant augmentation of instructional approaches. By enhancing laboratory demonstrations with digital technology, these structural issues can be addressed while at the same time enhancing student understanding and learning. Our case study focuses on the fermentation lab part of the Reaction Equilibria and Thermodynamics (RET) module, a first-year chemical engineering course at the University of Birmingham. Video demonstrations were used to introduce students to the laboratory set-ups and walk them through each step and technique. The video demonstrations allowed the students to attend the in-person lab sessions having established knowledge and understanding of the processes involved and the outcomes desired, which decreased the burden on the facilities and the staff. A knowledge-based quiz and a student survey conducted at the end of the module showed that the pre-lab videos encouraged more active participation in the laboratory sessions and reinforced learning. Approximately 70% of the students polled in the first survey conducted within this project felt more confident going into the laboratory sessions after watching the pre-lab videos and attempting the knowledge quiz, while 92% of the students polled in the second survey judged the pre-lab video sessions as beneficial to them. Overall, the teaching method has the potential to improve student participation and access, boost confidence and learning, and provided a more structured and flexible approach to laboratory learning outcomes.

From literature, we know that making the connections between mathematics and physics is not trivial for most students, even at the advanced level. In the specific context of partial derivatives in thermodynamics, research suggests that making explicit connections between the mathematics and the physics is necessary to foster student understanding. In this paper, we investigate how graphical reasoning can help undergraduate students in making connections between the partial derivatives of temperature with respect to position and to time and their respective physical meaning in the context of one-dimensional systems modeled by the heat equation. We conducted task-based, think aloud interviews with four pairs of undergraduate students majoring in physics or mathematics and use dynamic conceptual blending diagrams to analyze their reasoning processes and the role of the graphs therein. The results in this paper indicate that stimulating graphical reasoning is a promising way to promote the blending of mathematical and physical knowledge. Specifically, our data shows that constructing graphs can be a catalyst which helps students to give physical meaning to the partial derivatives ?T/?t and/or ?T/?x. Therefore, in teaching/learning activities, actively promoting graph construction and reasoning based on those graphs offers perspectives to support the blending of mathematics and physics.

A widespread call has been made to develop and support more integrated approaches to STEM education. The first law of thermodynamics serves as a guiding principle for the crosscutting concept of energy and matter. A qualitative interview study was undertaken to support integrated approaches to STEM education by exploring how chemistry, physics, and engineering students (n = 40) transfer first law concepts across disciplinary contexts. Acquired interview data were analysed through the lens of the dynamic transfer framework to reveal the underlying contextual elements students used to know with. Emergent trends across the disciplines revealed how these applied reasoning approaches and epistemologies were realised by each discipline. Productive transfer is shown to be facilitated by the coordination of different disciplinary epistemologies. Suggestions are made to practitioners on how to support students in applying different reasoning approaches when addressing first law problems. The applied methods also serve as a promising methodology for future investigation of students' transfer of crosscutting concepts.

This paper reports on the design of an innovative Electrochemistry course, part of a Chemical Science Engineering programme. Teachers have observed that their students' understanding of electrochemical concepts and phenomena is insufficient to attempt connections to further concepts, and to generate new knowledge in scientific problem-solving. A new course was required aiming to contribute to students' building mastery of concepts and deep insight into phenomena, both in and beyond the learning context. The course was designed tapping on ideas of inquiry-based learning and involving of conceptual modelling as a scaffold to learning. This pedagogical intervention departs from the consideration that conceptual modelling is an essential reasoning ability of (engineering) scientists and, consistently, it constitutes a key learning objective. Concurrent with the implementation of this course, an accompanying empirical investigation was set up to grasp how students learn electrochemistry with this novel pedagogical approach, and whether (and to what extent) there is any observable effect on the learning and transfer of electrochemical concepts. Both the instructional design of the course and the educational research design integrate considerations from Chemical Science, Philosophy of Science in Practice, and Education Sciences. The implications for engineering education and for educational research are discussed.

Recent progress in elucidating chemical reactions allows to explain chemistry by the potential energy of the involved chemical structures. Nevertheless, from an educational point of view, empirical results indicate that students often do not connect the core idea of energy with other chemical concepts. From a resource-oriented perspective, students do not draw on a coherent concept of chemistry to solve a problem but rather activate diverse cognitive resources, crucially depending on the context. It is thus of interest which resources high school students activate to reflect on energetic aspects of a chemical reaction. In this study, 38 German high school students in 16 focus groups were asked to explain kinetic and thermodynamic aspects of the reaction between hydrogen and chlorine. The unguided focus group phase and the following semistructured qualitative interview were analysed by qualitative content analysis. Results show that students have a diverse network of cognitive resources on energetic aspects. However, this network's structure seems to be dominated by terminology and a few prominent ideas such as activation energy. In contrast, students seldom drew connections between bond-making and energy release. Many students mainly argued on a macroscopic level and relied heavily on technical terms. If they argued on the sub-microscopic scale, however, they often focussed on the whole system rather than on specific molecules and their structure. Hence, students interpreted concepts like activation energy or reaction coordinate diagrams on the system level leading to unproductive reasoning. Overall, it seems that students seldom activate resources on molecular structures to argue about energetic changes in chemical reactions. Also, they rarely refer to the fundamental principle of energy minimisation to reason about the driving force of reactions. These results suggest that chemical reactions should be explained already in high schools on a molecular level providing a more explicit reference to energy as a function of chemical structures.

We discuss the development and validation of the long version of a conceptual multiple-choice survey instrument called the Survey of Thermodynamic Processes and First and Second Laws-Long suitable for introductory physics courses. This version of the survey instrument is a longer version of the original shorter version developed and validated earlier. The 19 contexts including the exact wording of all of the problem situations posed in the two versions of the survey instrument are identical and the difference between the long and short versions of the instrument is only in the multiple-choice options. In particular, in the longer version of the survey instrument, there are no alternative conceptions explicitly embedded in the four multiple-choice options students choose from and the questions asked in a given context in one item of the shorter survey instrument were split into several items focusing, e.g., on different thermodynamic variables. After the development and validation of the longer version of the survey instrument, the final version was administered in 12 different in-person classes (four different institutions) in which students answered the questions in-class on paper scantron forms with the instructor as the proctor and 12 different in-person classes (five different institutions) in which students answered the questions online on Qualtrics within a two-hour period. This longer version of the survey instrument was administered to introductory physics students in various traditionally taught calculus-based and algebra-based classes before and after traditional lecture-based instruction in relevant concepts. It was also administered to upper-level undergraduates majoring in physics and Ph.D. students taught traditionally for bench marking purposes and for concurrent validity, which involved comparing advanced students' performance with those of introductory students for whom the survey is intended. Similar to the shorter version, we find that although the longer version of the survey instrument focuses on thermodynamics concepts covered in introductory courses, it is challenging even for advanced students. A comparison with the baseline data on the longer version of the validated survey instrument presented here can help instructors evaluate the effectiveness of innovative pedagogies designed to help students develop a solid grasp of these concepts.

Contributing to a competency model for engineering thermodynamics, we investigate the empirical competency structure of our exams in an attempt to answer the question: Do we test the competencies we want to convey to our students? We demonstrate that thermodynamic modeling and mathematical solution emerge as significant dimensions of thermodynamic competency. Furthermore, we show how we were able to improve exam quality and raise our awareness about what actually makes exam tasks easy or difficult. [For Part I of the series, see EJ1388331.]

In response to the growing computational intensity of the healthcare industry, biomedical engineering (BME) undergraduate education is placing increased emphasis on computation. The presence of substantial gender disparities in many computationally intensive disciplines suggests that the adoption of computational instruction approaches that lack intentionality may exacerbate gender disparities. Educational research suggests that the development of an engineering and computational identity is one factor that can support students' decisions to enter and persist in an engineering major. Discipline-based identity research is used as a lens to understand retention and persistence of students in engineering. Our specific purpose is to apply discipline-based identity research to define and explore the computational identities of undergraduate engineering students who engage in computational environments. This work will inform future studies regarding retention and persistence of students who engage in computational courses. Twenty-eight undergraduate engineering students (20 women, 8 men) from three engineering majors (biomedical engineering, agricultural engineering, and biological engineering) participated in semi-structured interviews. The students discussed their experiences in a computationally-intensive thermodynamics course offered jointly by the Biomedical Engineering and Agricultural & Biological Engineering departments. The transcribed interviews were analyzed through thematic coding. The gender stereotypes associated with computer programming also come part and parcel with computer programming, possibly threatening a student's sense of belonging in engineering. The majority of the participants reported that their computational identity was "in the making." Students' responses also suggested that their engineering identity and their computational identity were in congruence, while some incongruence is found between their engineering identity and a creative identity as well as between computational identity and perceived feminine norms. Responses also indicate that students associate specific skills with having a computational identity. This study's findings present an emergent thematic definition of a computational person constructed from student perceptions and experiences. Instructors can support students' nascent computational identities through intentional mitigation of the gender stereotypes and biases, and by framing assignments to focus on developing specific skills associated with the computational modeling processes.

In the case of Chemistry subjects at the higher middle level, students tend to have a low performance in terms of academic exploration, either because of lack of motivation or lack of preparation in previous courses. In order to improve not only the academic performance of students in some topics of thermodynamics, but also the quality of teaching, this work proposes the use of some technological tools and practices combined with a constructivist methodology for teaching learning the subject heat capacity at constant pressure. A didactic sequence is designed that includes the use of interactive board as a learning teaching tool, as well as a teaching sequence that did not include the use of the board, to determine the influence of this tool on academic performance. To assess the scope in learning teaching, a questionnaire was designed, which was previously validated with groups of university students. The evaluation was designed for the topic of heat capacity, thus identifying the main alternative conceptions of students, the degree of learning regarding thermodynamic concepts in order to compare the pre- and post-teaching knowledge applied. The results of the post-didactic sequence evaluation, from the point of view of the student who learned using the interactive board, identify an improvement in understanding the main topics, a better willingness to work in the classroom, the ability to molecular representation of phenomena and an improvement in their verbal expression.

The use of spaced repetition within a physics higher education thermodynamics module has been analysed for: its pattern of use by students; its effect on memory and performance in the end of module exam; and performance in a delayed test after the summer vacation. A custom-built web app with the facility to generate a personalised repetition timetable was used to deliver practice questions on the material throughout the module. Just over a quarter of students, spanning the whole ability range of the class, made use of the app in some way, about half using it in a spaced manner and half using it for massed practice just before the exam. Students who engaged in a spaced manner had an adjusted mean exam score of 70%, compared to 64% for massed usage and 61% for non-usage. The spaced usage represents a positive effect size of 0.47 over non-usage, which is statistically significant (p = 0.000056). For the delayed test the mean adjusted scores for spacers and non-users were 45% and 34% respectively. Whilst less material had been retained over the summer, this revealed a statistically significant (p = 0.021) positive effect size of 0.54. This work provides evidence and mechanisms to involve students in repetitive practice during the learning phase of a course to advantage their long term retention of material.

The shift to remote teaching with the COVID-19 pandemic has made delivery of concept-based active learning more challenging, especially in large-enrollment engineering classes. I report here a modification in the Concept Warehouse to support delivery of concept questions. The new feature allows instructors to make students' reasoning visible to other students by showing selected written explanations to conceptually challenging multiple-choice questions. Data were collected for two large-enrollment engineering classes where examples are shown to illustrate how displaying written explanations can provide a resource for students to develop multi-variate reasoning skills.

Entropy is a concept with an extreme controversy which many scientists have been trying to explain. Some of the approaches employed in its definition contradict each other, which made it extremely difficult for high school and college students to understand. Boltzmann was the first person who brought a statistical explanation to entropy and linking it with the disorder concept (S = klnw). The point which received the highest amount of criticism is the similarity between the visual regulation in everyday life and regulation of particles, which is the metaphor that causes the highest number of misconceptions. The primary goal of this study is to go down the roots of the controversy surrounding the entropy concept and propose solutions. In the framework of all these difficulties, the concept was investigated with an integrated and simple approach. In this pretext, the macroscopic and microscopic features of entropy, the difficulties and misconceptions encountered, and the methods used in its education have been thoroughly examined. The final step was developing a "Tripod Approach" to facilitate the explanation of this complicated concept and fill the gaps in this area. In addition to it, alternative energy and probability-based and integrated entropy description, which reflects the essence of both macroscopic and microscopic approaches, was presented, and this description is expected to be a solution for the controversy resulting from the disorder concept.