Effect of Experiment Type on Student Learning Capabilities in a Heat Transfer Setting

There are many different ways to supplement students’ learning of concepts including experiments and simulations. However, there is a large difference in cost associated with having students complete a computer simulation and having them complete a lab activity on a particular physical phenomena. Because of this difference, it is of interest to know how a laboratory activity compares with a computer simulation in terms of student retention of knowledge of a concept. The goal of this work is to find the most effective supplementary activity to ensure that students understand concepts in a Heat and Mass Transfer class and to ensure that students retain the information from their class.

In teaching heat transfer, inquiry-based activities were created to demonstrate concepts dealing with radiation and confusion over factors impacting rate of heat transfer vs. amount of energy transferred. These inquiry-based activities have four different variations: students individually performing an experiment, students individually performing a simulation of the experiment, faculty demonstration of the same experiment, and faculty demonstration of the same simulation in front of a group of students or a lecture. The main idea of experiments is usually to teach a certain concept that may escape students in a traditional lecture, by using an example of the physical phenomena itself in a situation where students often mis-predict the outcome. Our work is to determine the relative effectiveness of each activity for teaching students concepts within the class.

To determine a student's’ understanding of concepts, quantitative and qualitative data was used. This data was collected from a number of universities (ranging from small private liberal arts schools to large public universities) in the form of concept inventories (quantitative) and post-lab questions (qualitative). The focus of the present study was on the qualitative data. The concept inventories were standardized, multiple-choice tests that were given to students at the beginning and end of their heat transfer course and included questions related to rate vs. amount and radiation. The post-lab questions were questions about the specific lab a student has just completed and are usually answered within a week of the student’s lab or simulation, which occur at some point within the academic semester. All of these together create a way to measure a student’s understanding of the concepts that the inquiry-based activities are meant to reinforce at various points throughout the course. Quantitative and qualitative analyses agree that having students perform experiments results in the highest level of conceptual learning.