"You Evaporated?" vs. "It Escaped ": A Comparison of Students 'Reasoning about Vaporization when Using Participatory and Non-Participatory Simulations

This study compares learning with a participatory simulation in which students play the role of particles in a fluid, and that of others who use the more common modality of model manipulation and observation. We explore the particular contributions of each modality for learning about phase changes in the context of the particle model of matter. We find that the participatory modality of simulation provides significantly greater learning gains in building some of the concepts - those related to inter-particle interactions and heat transfer. Other ideas were developed to a similar extent in both conditions. (מתוך המאמר‎)