PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

Understanding physicochemical concepts that describe the behaviour of statistical entities of particles is a challenge to first-year tertiary chemistry students. This is not only due to high-level mathematical representations used in teaching these subjects. This study is based on the assumption, that one crucial difficulty is acquiring mental models concerning dynamic processes of a many-particle-body in order to reach an understanding on the sub-microscopic level. Maxwell's speed distribution is an example of such a concept. The following article presents an interactive online-based learning activity which was designed to help students develop such mental models on the sub-microscopic level and to support connecting those models to abstract mathematical representations. Qualitative think-aloud-studies, interviews, and online-questionnaires are used to analyse students' conceptions and evaluate their learning progress.