Abstract Background Engagement with particle-level simulations can help students visualize the motion and interactions of gas particles, thus helping them develop a more scientifically accurate mental model. Such engagement outside of class prior to formal instruction can help meet the needs of students from diverse backgrounds and provide instructors with a common experience upon which to build with further instruction. Yet, even with well-designed scaffolds, students may not attend to the most salient aspects of the simulation. In this case, a screencast where an instructor provides narrated use of the simulation and points students towards the important observations may provide additional benefits. This study, which is part of the larger ChemSims project, investigates the use of simulations and screencasts to support students’ developing understanding of gas properties by examining student learning gains. Results This study indicates that both students manipulating the simulation on their own and those observing a screencast exhibited significant learning gains from pre- to post-assessment. However, students who observed the screencast were more than twice as likely to transition from a macroscopic explanation to a particle-level explanation of gas behavior in answering matched pre- and post-test questions. Eye-tracking studies indicated very similar viewing and usage patterns formore »
This content will become publicly available on July 1, 2023
ChemSims: using simulations and screencasts to help students develop particle-level understanding of equilibrium in an online environment before and during COVID
Equilibrium is a challenging concept for many, largely because developing a deep conceptual understanding of equilibrium requires someone to be able to connect the motions and interactions of particles that cannot be physically observed with macroscopic observations. Particle level chemistry animations and simulations can support student connections of particle motion with macroscopic observations, but for topics such as equilibrium additional visuals such as graphs are typically present which add additional complexity. Helping students make sense of such visuals requires careful scaffolding to draw their attention to important features and help them make connections between representations ( e.g. , particle motion and graphical representations). Further, as students enter our classrooms with varying levels of background understanding, they may require more or less time working with such simulations or animations to develop the desired level of conceptual understanding. This paper describes the development and testing of activities that use the PhET simulation “Reactions and Rates” to introduce the concept of equilibrium as a student preclass activity either in the form of directly using the simulation or guided by an instructor through a screencast. The pre-post analysis of the two most recent implementations of these activities indicates that students show improved understanding of more »
- Publication Date:
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10342027
- Journal Name:
- Chemistry Education Research and Practice
- Volume:
- 23
- Issue:
- 3
- Page Range or eLocation-ID:
- 644 to 661
- ISSN:
- 1109-4028
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Mechanics instructors frequently employ hands-on learning with goals such as demonstrating physical phenomena, aiding visualization, addressing misconceptions, exposing students to “real-world” problems, and promoting an engaging classroom environment. This paper presents results from a study exploring the importance of the “hands-on” aspect of a hands-on modeling curriculum we have been developing that spans several topics in statics. The curriculum integrates deep conceptual exploration with analysis procedure tutorials and aims to scaffold students’ development of representational competence, the ability to use multiple representations of a concept as appropriate for learning, problem solving, and communication. We conducted this study over two subsequent terms in an online statics course taught in the context of remote learning amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The intervention section used a take-home adaptation of the original classroom curriculum. This adaptation consisted of eight activity worksheets with a supplied kit of manipulatives and model-building supplies students could use to construct and explore concrete representations of figures and diagrams used in the worksheets. In contrast, the control section used activity worksheets nearly identical to those used in the hands-on curriculum, but without the associated modeling parts kit. We only made minor revisions to the worksheets to remove reference to the models.more »
-
Mechanics instructors frequently employ hands-on learning with goals such as demonstrating physical phenomena, aiding visualization, addressing misconceptions, exposing students to “real-world” problems, and promoting an engaging classroom environment. This paper presents results from a study exploring the importance of the “hands-on” aspect of a hands-on modeling curriculum we have been developing that spans several topics in statics. The curriculum integrates deep conceptual exploration with analysis procedure tutorials and aims to scaffold students’ development of representational competence, the ability to use multiple representations of a concept as appropriate for learning, problem solving, and communication. We conducted this study over two subsequent terms in an online statics course taught in the context of remote learning amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The intervention section used a take-home adaptation of the original classroom curriculum. This adaptation consisted of eight activity worksheets with a supplied kit of manipulatives and model-building supplies students could use to construct and explore concrete representations of figures and diagrams used in the worksheets. In contrast, the control section used activity worksheets nearly identical to those used in the hands-on curriculum, but without the associated modeling parts kit. We only made minor revisions to the worksheets to remove reference to the models.more »
-
Instructor-led presentation-based teaching mainly focuses on delivering content. Whereas student active presentations-based teaching approaches require students to take leadership in learning actions. Many teaching and learning strategies were adopted to foster active student participation during in-class learning activities. We developed the student presentation-based effective teaching (SPET) approach in 2014 to make student presentation activity the central element of learning challenging concepts. We have developed several versions to meet the need for teaching small classes (P. Tyagi, "Student Presentation Based Effective Teaching (SPET) Approach for Advanced Courses," in ASME IMECE 2016-66029, V005T06A026), large enrolment classes (P. Tyagi, "Student Presentation Based Teaching (SPET) Approach for Classes With Higher Enrolment," ASME IMECE 2018-88463, V005T07A035), and online teaching during COVID-19. (P. Tyagi, "Second Modified Student Presentation Based Effective Teaching (SPET) Method Tested in COVID-19 Affected Senior Level Mechanical Engineering Course," in ASME IMECE 2020-23615, V009T09A026). The SPET approach has successfully engaged students with varied interests and competence levels in the learning process. SPET approach has also made it possible to cover new topics such as training engineering students about positive intelligence skills to foster lifelong learning aptitude and doing engineering projects in a group setting. However, it was noted that many students who weremore »
-
This work in progress paper describes ongoing work to understand the ways in which students make use of manipulatives to develop their representational competence and deepen their conceptual understanding of course content. Representational competence refers to the fluency with which a subject expert can move between different representations of a concept (e.g. mathematical, symbolic, graphical, 2D vs. 3D, pictorial) as appropriate for communication, reasoning, and problem solving. Several hands-on activities for engineering statics have been designed and implemented in face-to-face courses since fall 2016. In the transition to online learning in response to the COVID 19 pandemic, modeling kits were sent home to students so they could work on the activities at their own pace and complete the associated worksheets. An assignment following the vector activities required students to create videotaped or written reflections with annotated pictures using the models to explain their thinking around key concepts. Students made connections between abstract symbolic representations and their physical models to explain concepts such as a general 3D unit vector, the difference between spherical coordinate angles and coordinate direction angles, and the meaning of decomposing a vector into components perpendicular and parallel to a line. Thematic analysis of the video and writtenmore »
