ido borsini

Three academic years have been considered for the evaluation of the impact of an online tutoring course of general and inorganic chemistry for freshmen students of the University of XX (Italy). The online material mainly consists of video tutorials, other open source web tools and multi-choice self-assessment exercises. During the academic year 2016-2017, the e-learning course was not available yet, but then the online course was first implemented (2017/18) and fully adopted (2018/2019).The online tutoring support was activated alongside a traditional general chemistry course, adopting a blended mode, with the aims of: (i) homogenising freshmen's chemistry knowledge (ii) fostering the most appropriate method of study in a multi access modality (iii) implementing the Johnstone's three levels' knowledge and (iv) increasing students' self-confidence, by the means of a self-evaluation training process. Differently from previous studies, the online course herein aimed mai...

Riassunto. Si propone un'esperienza analogica come introduzione didattica ai concetti di entropia e alla sua interpretazione statistica. Dimostreremo che l'e-sperienza proposta riduce i prerequisiti necessari per comprendere gli argomenti principali della termodinamica dei sistemi fisici all'equilibrio termico. Inoltre esa-mineremo in dettaglio come i concetti di stato macroscopico, stato microscopico, irreversibilità, equilibrio emergano dalla manipolazione del sistema, e permettano allo studente di capire le principali leggi della statistica di Boltzmann e di usarla per ulteriori inferenze. Completeremo l'esposizione mostrando che le proprietà del sistema proposto corrispondono ad analoghe proprietà dei sistemi termodinamici all'equilibrio termico. Abstract. An analog experience is proposed as a didactic introduction to the basic concepts of entropy and its statistical interpretation. We will demonstrate that the proposed experience can lower the level of prerequisites needed to understand the main behavior of thermodynamic systems at equilibrium. Moreover we will examine in detail how the concepts of macroscopic and microscopic states, irreversibility, equilibrium naturally emerge, and how they allow students to understand the main features of Boltzmann statistics, and to use it for further inferences. Furthermore we demonstrate the correspondence of properties of the proposed system with the main properties of the thermodynamic of equilibrium. 1. Introduzione Una esperienza analogicà e una corrispondenza tra due fenomeni diversi retti da stesse regole formali, che possono essere assunti l'uno come modello dell'altro. Un modello analogicopù o servire come strumento di calcolo o di misura epù o, nei casi nei quali il modello matematico del sistema fisico risulta particolarmente complesso, sostituirlo al fine di prevederne dati sperimentali ed andamenti generali [1]. Il principale vantaggio, che l'esperienza analogica offre, ` e quello di abbassare i prerequisiti necessari alla comprensione delle relazioni matematiche che descrivono il

From the point of view of the educational impact on university students, four different ways of carrying out physics experiments are compared. The didactical tools suitable for simulating, by means of an e-learning platform, the inquiry-based and the recipe-based laboratory activities are constructed and described. The tests are constructed, and validated by means of Item Response Theory and Factor Analysis techniques:
- for building the necessary statistical samples,
- for determining the educational impact of the four different didactical paths.
The statistical techniques adopted for evaluating the educational impact of the different didactical paths are described in their theoretical details, also providing, for each one, an explicit example of use.
The HTML-JavaScript algorithms needed to simulate the experiments in e-learning modality are described in detail. Furthermore, a computer tool is proposed that can help the teacher to produce simulations of thermodynamic systems subjected to thermal and adiabatic interactions.
The results of the statistical experiment are given as a functions of the statistical variables competence and awareness.
The statistical experiment confirms that:
- the inquiry-based didactic paths, especially if realized in the e-learning modality, reach the maximum educational impact from the point of view of the knowledge of the topics,
- the didactic paths carried out in the laboratory, especially for the inquiry-based experiments, reach the maximum educational impact from the point of view of the awareness of the acquired knowledge.
Finally, our study confirms recent finding in the literature, i.e., that when the didactic path is carried out in inquiry mode, the students can construct robust and original knowledge of the proposed subject as an evidence of the students’ acquired agency.