Peer Review

Thermodynamics

Material Detail page

Reviewed:: Nov 29, 2018 by Engineering

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:

Addressed to chemical engineering undergraduate students, this website covers difficult topics in thermodynamics including reversibility, entropy and the second law, equilibrium and steady state, reaction equilibrium and rate, internal energy and enthalpy, vapor-liquid equilibrium, and systems and surroundings.

Every topic contains videos, practice problems and simulation case studies. Videos were home-made, performed by the students of the Bucknell University (US). Very interactive website, with external links to Wikipedia (basic definitions), open books or e-books, LearnChemE.com, LearnThermo.com , Khan Academy, and offer of supplementary MOOC courses at MIT OpenCourseWare or Coursera. The course could be very useful for undergraduate students of chemical engineering.

Type of Material:

Learning Object Repository. Website.

Recommended Uses:

It could be recommended as a basic course on chemical thermodynamics, both for traditional and blended teaching.

Technical Requirements:

I used Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge browsers to access the material. Depending on the updated version of the browser, some facilities could be non-activated.

Identify Major Learning Goals:

Students will learn some of the basic concepts and principles of thermodynamics, as well as other more complex concepts, as the phase equilibrium, both in reactive and non-reactive systems. Many examples (practice, simulation ) and explanation videos are available to fix basic concepts in a very active mode.

Target Student Population:

Undergraduate students.

Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:

It is necessary to have previous knowledge on physics, chemistry and mathematics at high school level.

Content Quality

Rating:
Strengths:: The concepts are very well explained in order to make students learn thermodynamics. The videos with familiar situations help to understand complex concepts. The content coverage is very adequate for chemical engineers.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:

Strengths:

Videos can be used both for teachers in class to reinforce concepts, and for students at home.

For each section there are available some practice problems with the solutions, to help students evaluate their knowledge.

Links to research papers, online textbooks and online courses are also available as supplementary material, which completes the amount of information provided.

The material could be used for self-learning, blended learning. The material can serve to summarize basic concepts on chemical thermodynamics.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:

Strengths:

The material is very appealing and engaging.

The information given is clear and concise. Videos made by young girls and boys are coupled to each topic, which doesn’t give the boring appearance that is normally related to thermodynamics. Navigation is very intuitive. You can go forward and back easily. The site organization is well structured.

Other Issues and Comments:: Very good material, both for students and for teachers to learn / teach the core concepts of thermodynamics.
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