Modern teaching instruments for the establishment of the thermodynamic values of real gases in the training of engineer students SORIN NEACŞU*, SILVIAN SUDITU*, CĂTĂLIN POPESCU** *The Hydraulics, Thermotechnics and Reservoir Engineering Department, Oil-Gas University of Ploieşti **The Management-Marketing Department, Oil-Gas University of Ploieşti 39 Bucureşti Bvd., Ploieşti, 100680 ROMANIA sneacsu.ph@gmail.com / silviusuditu@yahoo.com / catalin_nicolae@yahoo.com Abstract: In the hereby study, we describe and present analytically several software applications – designed as an effective complex teaching-learning means but attractive and useful friendly at the same time – developed by us for the students – future engineers – in the oil industry. Our preoccupation is directed towards the building-up and adopting of a modern strategy that should favour the students’ active and participative learning, as it is well-known the high level of difficulty and abstractness of this scientific domain. What we are trying to achieve by means of this endeavour is to shift the focus from “to know” to “to know how to do”. In this respect, our research study presents the “Real Gases” software, a learning tool used for the calculation of thermodynamic values of gases and gas mixtures, both hydrocarbons and other gases. Key words: educational software, thermodynamic values, gases, gas mixtures, teaching-learning instruments 1 General context Potentially one of the most worrying issues nowadays, both at the level of its research and development, and at the level of refining it, is represented by getting acquainted with the use of the process and of the product with a view to developing human personality, to developing some new technological applications, to the social development in general. University centres find themselves at the top of knowledge, trying – moreover – to change and to process knowledge into educational, technological or social instruments. The technical education in Romania is trying a full approach, by resorting both to the system of the classical, traditional didactic methods and means, and to the learning strategies and techniques which favour the students’ understanding and building-up of their own knowledge. Our study presents the result of the endeavour related to the improvement of the quality of the technical higher education, by resorting to modern, constructivist methods, procedures and instruments which we consider to be alternative or complementary solutions to the classical or current ones that are put into practice. To be more exact, it is about the design and the use, in the activity with the students, of a software that includes a set of educational programs that facilitate and improve applicative learning. As a modern teaching-learning instrument, the educational software develops a wide range of electronic materials, with a view to bringing more effectiveness and simplification to the knowledge and education process by means of: - orientation, recognition, independent search, individual search; - comparison, differentiation, networking, association, assignment; - correlation, synthesis, combination, processing; - structuring, grasping meaning, generalization; - task analysis; - the use of cognitive instruments, as operators: lists or packages of implied algorithms, cognitive networks with variants of solution routes etc. (see E. Joita, 2007, 128-129). We refer to these types of didactic strategies in the context of the engineering education, as it is well known the fact that the software type of educational program implies a planned and organised learning experience and, at the same time, a systematic, sequential and logical presentation of the content, thus allowing the students to assimilate knowledge in their own manner. Consequently, our target is, in/through the teaching and learning didactic process, that the WSEAS TRANSACTIONS on ADVANCES in ENGINEERING EDUCATION Sorin Neacsu, Silvian Suditu, Catalin Popescu ISSN: 1790-1979 347 Issue 11, Volume 7, November 2010