Understanding the Continued Poor Performance in Thermodynamics as a First Step toward an Instructional Strategy

Abstract

As a discipline, engineering thermodynamics is concerned with traditional and alternative sources of energy in terms of availability, movement and conversion. Practical issues such as efficiency of thermodynamic processes and systems are also studied. Stout understanding of thermodynamics by graduating engineers is indispensable for addressing the foremost global issue: the looming energy crisis and its related problems of pollution and global warming. Despite this monumental importance, engineering students continue to struggle with thermodynamics as indicated by the results of recent national US exams. Student's difficulties with thermodynamics have been also reported in several European countries, Australia and India. The current authors contend that understanding the root causes of problems with teaching/learning thermodynamics is an indispensable first step toward a design of an instructional strategy (and/or curricula and textbooks) geared at removing barriers to students' learning of thermodynamics. The purpose of this paper is to give a concise yet comprehensive account of the pertinent literature, and to analyze this literature in order to accurately describe the nature of problems of learning and teaching thermodynamics. The paper also describes the methods used for probing these problems, tried techniques for solving them and the degree of success achieved. In general, the literature points at two challenging problems. First, students do not properly learn thermodynamic concepts and principles; second, students have difficulty recognizing relevant concepts and principles, and putting them together in order to solve thermodynamic problems. The latter problem seems to not have received vital study and attention as the former. More details about these problems are given in this paper.

Improving Students' Conceptual Reasoning by Prompting Cognitive Operations

“…Our research addresses these gaps by testing the effects of OEM-Thermo for students enrolled in a first course in thermodynamics. We selected this course because there is a well-documented need to support college students' learning in this domain (Dukhan & Schumack, 2013). The following section describes this context; then we describe how OEM-Thermo stimulates organization, elaboration, and monitoring.…”

Teaching, Learning, and Understanding of Thermodynamics in a Mechanical Engineering Curriculum

“…It is up to the individual instructor to determine who passed and who failed a course based on some general guidelines provided in the course outline. A few of the published literature [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] have extensively documented the difficulty students face in thermodynamics classes. One would assume that as the science of energy, and since energy is used in everyday activities, students of thermodynamics would embrace the subject matter and do well in a class on the subject matter.…”

“…One would assume that as the science of energy, and since energy is used in everyday activities, students of thermodynamics would embrace the subject matter and do well in a class on the subject matter. Among the recommendations [10] for improving the situation are the use of technology, such as videos, interactive simulators, and discussion forums that rely heavily on the use of the internet. Textbooks in Thermodynamics continue to present the subject matter in abstract terms which further confuses students when attempting to read and understand the materials independently without the help of an instructor.…”