Evaluating the Effectiveness of Modelling-Oriented Workshops for Engineering Undergraduates in the Field of Thermally Activated Phenomena
Research in Science Education, ISSN: 1573-1898, Vol: 49, Issue: 5, Page: 1395-1413
2019
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Example: if you select the 1-year option for an article published in 2019 and a metric category shows 90%, that means that the article or review is performing better than 90% of the other articles/reviews published in that journal in 2019. If you select the 3-year option for the same article published in 2019 and the metric category shows 90%, that means that the article or review is performing better than 90% of the other articles/reviews published in that journal in 2019, 2018 and 2017.
Citation Benchmarking is provided by Scopus and SciVal and is different from the metrics context provided by PlumX Metrics.
Article Description
Two 20-h modelling-based workshops focused on the explanation of thermally activated phenomena were held at the University of Palermo, Italy, during the Academic Year 2014–2015. One of them was conducted by applying an inquiry-based approach, while the other, still based on laboratory and modelling activities, was not focused on inquiry. Seventy-two students belonging to the Undergraduate Program for Chemical Engineering attended the two workshops. The related content was focused on an à la Feynman unifying approach to thermally activated phenomena. Questionnaires were administered to the students of both groups, before and post instruction. Responses were analysed using k-means cluster analysis and students’ inferred lines of reasoning about the description and explanation of phenomena were studied in both groups. We find that both workshops can be considered effective in improving student’s reasoning skills. However, the inquiry-based approach revealed to be more effective than the traditional one in helping students to build mechanisms of functioning and explicative models and to identify common aspects in apparently different phenomena.
Bibliographic Details
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
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