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Simulations have changed chemistry education by allowing students to visualize the motion and interaction of particles underlying important chemical processes. With kinetics, such visualizations can illustrate how particles interact to yield successful reactions and how changes in concentration and temperature impact the number and success of individual collisions. This study examined how a simulation exploring particle collisions, or screencast employing the same simulation, used as an out-of-class introduction helped develop students’ conceptual understanding of kinetics. Students either manipulated the simulation themselves using guided instructions or watched a screencast in which an expert used the same simulation to complete an assignment. An iterative design approach and analysis of pretest and follow up questions suggests that students in both groups at two different institutions were able to achieve a common base level of success. Instructors can then build upon this common experience when instructing students on collision theory and kinetics. Eye-tracking studies indicate that the simulation and screencast groups engage with the curricular materials in different ways, which combined with student self-report data suggests that the screencast and simulation provide different levels of cognitive demand. This increased time on task suggests that the screencast may hold student interest longer than the simulation alone.
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This content will become publicly available on December 5, 2025
re Engineering Students Motivated by Interacting With Simulations They Program? A Controlled Study
When instructors want to design programming assignments to motivate their students, a common design choice is to have those students write code to make an artifact (e.g. apps, games, music, or images). The goal of this study is to understand the impacts of including artifact creation in a programming assignment on students’ motivation, time on task, and cognitive load. To do so, we conducted a controlled lab study with seventy-three students from an introductory engineering course. The experimental group created a simulation they could interact with – thus having the full experience of artifact creation – while the control group wrote the exact same code, but evaluated it only with test cases. We hypothesized that students who could interact with the simulation they were programming would be more motivated to complete the assignment and report higher intrinsic motivation. However, we found no significant difference in motivation or cognitive load between the groups. Additionally, the experimental group spent more time completing the assignment than the control group. Our results suggest that artifact creation may not be necessary for motivating students in all contexts, and that artifact creation may have other effects such as increased time on task. Additionally, instructors and researchers should consider when, and in what contexts, artifact creation is beneficial and when it may not be
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- Award ID(s):
- 1917885
- PAR ID:
- 10528607
- Publisher / Repository:
- ACM SIGCSE Virtual Conference 2024
- Date Published:
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- assignment Design motivation novice programmers interactive artifact
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- online
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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