Development and Validation of a conceptual survey instrument to evaluate introductory physics students' understanding of thermodynamics

TL;DR

This paper presents the development and validation of a multiple-choice survey tool to assess introductory physics students' understanding of thermodynamics, revealing it remains challenging even for advanced students and aiding instructional evaluation.

Contribution

The paper introduces a validated, concept-focused survey instrument for thermodynamics that incorporates common student difficulties and is applicable across various educational levels.

Findings

Survey is challenging for advanced students.

Instrument effectively identifies student misconceptions.

Benchmark data for evaluating teaching methods.

Abstract

We discuss the development and validation of a conceptual multiple-choice survey instrument called the Survey of Thermodynamic Processes and First and Second Laws (STPFaSL) suitable for introductory physics courses. The survey instrument uses common student difficulties with these concepts as resources in that the incorrect answers to the multiple-choice questions were guided by them. After the development and validation of the survey instrument, the final version was administered at six different institutions. It was administered to introductory physics students in various traditionally taught calculus-based and algebra-based classes in paper-pencil format before and after traditional lecture-based instruction in relevant concepts. We also administered the survey instrument to upper-level undergraduates majoring in physics and Ph.D. students for bench marking and for content validity and compared their performance with those of introductory students for whom the survey is intended. We find that although the survey instrument focuses on thermodynamics concepts covered in introductory courses, it is challenging even for advanced students. A comparison with the base line data on the validated survey instrument presented here can help instructors evaluate the effectiveness of innovative pedagogies designed to help students develop a solid grasp of these concepts.