Assessment and repair of critical misconceptions in engineering heat transfer and thermodynamics

This final report from our NSF funded (DUE 0717536) study examines the use of inquiry-based teaching to promote misconception repair in four critical areas in heat transfer (rate of heat transfer vs. amount of energy transferred, confusion between temperature and energy, confusion between how something “feels” and its temperature, and confusion about radiation) and five critical areas in thermodynamics (Entropy, Equilibrium and Steady State, and Internal Energy and Enthalpy). Significant work demonstrates that students often enter the classroom with tightly held misconceptions about the physical world that are not effectively addressed through traditional lecture-style teaching. This work has two primary parts: the development and testing of a concept inventories to reliably assess students conceptual understanding in these areas and the development and assessment of inquiry-based activities designed to repair students’ misconceptions. For the instrument, reliability data was collected through both preand postcourse assessments at over 15 institutions nationwide. Results indicated that both the Heat and Energy Concept Inventory (HECI) and the Concept Inventory for Engineering Thermodynamics (CIET) instruments have sufficient reliability during posttesting for use as a research instruments. Results also indicate that students enter their courses with significant misconceptions in the relevant concept areas, tending to score about 50% on pre-tests. While instruction does improve conceptual understanding significantly relative to the precourse scores, average overall scores are still in the 60%, indicating that further improvement is desirable. One approach to the repair of misconceptions is through inquiry-based activities. In these activities, the instructor creates a laboratory or simulation situation where students may directly observe their misconceptions fail to explain the results while the correct concepts succeed. A set of two activities along with worksheets and explanatory materials was developed for each misconception area. These were tested at over 15 institutions. Use of these activities improves students’ postcourse scores on the concept inventories by about an additional 10 percentage points on average, a significant improvement over both the pre-test and the non-intervention case. Introduction and Background Students’ conceptual understanding forms the basis for their transfer of learning from one context, such as classrooms, to another, such as their jobs [1]. Cultivating conceptual understanding is challenged by the preconceptions students hold based on their prior experiences. When faculty fail to engage and P ge 23221.2 challenge these misconceptions, students often revert to their prior state after a class is completed. Several approaches have shown promise in misconception repair. Our work is inspired by the Workshop Physics approach of Laws et al [2]. In this approach, students participate in inquiry-based activities that present direct challenges to students’ most common misconceptions. Students are presented with physical situations or simulations in which the most-common misconceptions will lead them to make a false prediction of the outcome. For example, predicting that the temperature of a ceramic floor tile is lower than the temperature of a piece of wood. Students then actively engage in experimenting with the situation, taking the opportunity to convince themselves that reality is not as they had predicted. Students then reflect on their experience in order to cement their learning. The key aspects of Laws et al’s approach are summarized in Table 1. TABLE 1:Elements of Inquiry-Based Activity Modules [2] (a) Use peer instruction and collaborative work (b) Use activity-‐based guided-‐inquiry curricular materials (c) Use a learning cycle beginning with predictions (d) Emphasize conceptual understanding (e) Let the physical world be the authority (f) Evaluate student understanding (g) Make appropriate use of technology (h) Begin with the specific and move to the general In this work, we identified four concept areas in heat transfer and five in thermodynamics that had potential to benefit from the creation of misconception repair activities. These concept areas are briefly described in Table 2. TABLE 2: Concept Areas Area Short Concept Name Misconception Heat Transfer Temperature vs. Energy Temperature is a direct indicator of the energy content of a system. Temperature vs. “Feeling” How an object feels to the touch indicates its temperature exclusively. Rate vs. Amount Factors which impact how quickly energy is transferred likewise impact how much energy is transferred. Thermal Radiation Color is the most important factor in radiative heat transfer. Thermodynamics Entropy Any system can be made 99.% efficient Reversibility Any system can be run reversibly Internal Energy vs. Enthalpy Internal energy and enthalpy are interchangeable Steady State vs. Equilibrium Steady state and equilibrium are interchangeable terms Reaction rate vs. Reaction Equilibrium Factors which impact how quickly a reaction occurs also impact how much product is created. We then assembled and tested the reliability of multiple choice concept inventories, the Heat and Energy Concept Inventory (HECI) focused on the four heat transfer concepts, and the Concept Inventory for Engineering Thermodynamics (CIET) for the five thermodynamics concepts. Page 23221.3 Finally, for each concept area, we created two inquiry-based activities. These activities incorporate the components of Table 1, with several significant additions. First, all students complete a written prediction and post-activity reflection. This is done to promote accurate recall and help students internalize their experiences in lab. Second, activities were designed with the goal of taking about 15 minutes and being possible using standard lab equipment amended only with items available for less than $20 at Walmart.