Fostering elementary school students' understanding of simple electricity by combining simulation and laboratory activities

Abstract   Computer simulations and laboratory activities have been traditionally treated as substitute or competing methods in science teaching. The aim of this experimental study was to investigate if it would be more beneficial to combine simulation and laboratory activities than to use them separately in teaching the concepts of simple electricity. Based on their pre-test performances, 66 elementary school students were placed into three different learning environments: computer simulation, laboratory exercise and a simulation–laboratory combination. The results showed that the simulation–laboratory combination environment led to statistically greater learning gains than the use of either simulation or laboratory activities alone, and it also promoted students' conceptual understanding most efficiently. There were no statistical differences between simulation and laboratory environments. The results highlight the benefits of using simulation along with hands-on laboratory activities to promote students' understanding of electricity. A simulation can help students to first understand the theoretical principles of electricity; however, in order to promote conceptual change, it is necessary to challenge further students' intuitive conceptions by demonstrating through testing that the laws and principles that are discovered through a simulation also apply in reality.     

Comparing and combining real and virtual experimentation: an effort to enhance students' conceptual understanding of electric circuits

Abstract  The purpose of this study was to investigate value of combining Real Experimentation (RE) with Virtual Experimentation (VE) with respect to changes in students' conceptual understanding of electric circuits. To achieve this, a pre–post comparison study design was used that involved 88 undergraduate students. The participants were randomly assigned to an experimental (45 students) and a control group (43 students). Each group attended a one semester course in physics for preservice elementary school teachers. Both groups used the same inquiry-based curriculum materials. Participants in the control group used RE to conduct the study's experiments, whereas, participants in the experimental group used RE in the first part of the curriculum and VE in another part. Conceptual tests were administered to assess students' understanding of electric circuits before, during and after the teaching intervention. Results indicated that the combination of RE and VE enhanced students' conceptual understanding more than the use of RE alone. A further analysis showed that differences between groups on that part of the curriculum in which the experimental group used VE and the control group RE, in favour of VE.     

The effects of directive self‐explanation prompts to support active processing of multiple representations in a simulation‐based learning environment

Processing of multiple representations in multimedia learning environments is considered to help learners obtain a more complete overview of the domain and gain deeper knowledge. This is based on the idea that relating and translating different representations leads to reflection beyond the boundaries and details of the separate representations. To achieve this, the design of a learning environment should support learners in adequately processing multiple representations. In this study, we compared a scientific inquiry learning environment providing instructional support with directive self‐explanation prompts to relate and translate between representations with a scientific inquiry learning environment providing instructional support with general self‐explanation prompts. Learners who received the directive prompts outperformed the learners who received general prompts on test items assessing domain knowledge. These positive results did not stretch to transfer items and items measuring learners' capabilities to relate and translate representations in general. The results suggest that learner support should promote the active relation of representations and translation between them to foster domain knowledge, and that other forms of support (e.g. extended training) might be necessary to make learners more expert processors of multiple representations.     

Provision and maintenance of presence and immersion in hand‐held virtual reality through motion based interaction

Hand‐held devices are also becoming computationally more powerful and being equipped with special sensors and non‐traditional displays for diverse applications aside from just making phone calls. As such, it raises the question of whether realizing virtual reality, providing a minimum level of immersion and presence, might be possible on a hand‐held device capable of only relatively “small” display. In this paper, we propose that motion based interaction can widen the perceived field of view (FOV) more than the actual physical FOV, and in turn, increase the sense of presence and immersion up to a level comparable to that of a desktop or projection display based VR systems. We have implemented a prototype hand‐held VR platform and conducted two experiments to verify our hypothesis. Our experimental study has revealed that when a motion based interaction was used, the FOV perceived by the user for the small hand held device was significantly greater than (around 50%) the actual. Other larger display platforms using the conventional button or mouse/keyboard interface did not exhibit such a phenomenon. In addition, the level of user felt presence in the hand‐held platform was higher than or comparable to those in VR platforms with larger displays. We hypothesize that this phenomenon is related to and analogous to the way the human vision system compensates for differences in acuity resolution in the eye/retina through the saccadic activity. The paper demonstrates the distinct possibility of realizing reasonable virtual reality even with devices with a small visual FOV and limited processing power. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.