Exploration of factors that affect the comparative effectiveness of physical and virtual manipulatives in an undergraduate laboratory

dc.creator	Jacquelyn J. Chini1
dc.creator	Adrian Madsen2
dc.creator	Elizabeth Gire3
dc.creator	N. Sanjay Rebello2
dc.creator	Sadhana Puntambekar4
dc.date	2012-04-01T00:00:00Z
dc.date.accessioned	2015-07-20T22:08:20Z
dc.date.available	2015-07-20T22:08:20Z
dc.identifier	1554-9178
dc.identifier	https://doaj.org/article/eff7dd62da0e4d00a653bb8c38414b7b
dc.identifier.uri	http://evidence.thinkportal.org/handle/123456789/11939
dc.description	Recent research results have failed to support the conventionally held belief that students learn physics best from hands-on experiences with physical equipment. Rather, studies have found that students who perform similar experiments with computer simulations perform as well or better on measures of conceptual understanding than their peers who used physical equipment. In this study, we explored how university-level nonscience majors’ understanding of the physics concepts related to pulleys was supported by experimentation with real pulleys and a computer simulation of pulleys. We report that when students use one type of manipulative (physical or virtual), the comparison is influenced both by the concept studied and the timing of the post-test. Students performed similarly on questions related to force and mechanical advantage regardless of the type of equipment used. On the other hand, students who used the computer simulation performed better on questions related to work immediately after completing the activities; however, the two groups performed similarly on the work questions on a test given one week later. Additionally, both sequences of experimentation (physical-virtual and virtual-physical) equally supported students’ understanding of all of the concepts. These results suggest that both the concept learned and the stability of learning gains should continue to be explored to improve educators’ ability to select the best learning experience for a given topic.
dc.language	English
dc.publisher	American Physical Society, APS
dc.relation	http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.8.010113
dc.relation	https://doaj.org/toc/1554-9178
dc.source	Physical Review Special Topics. Physics Education Research, Vol 8, Iss 1 (2012)
dc.subject	Education (General)
dc.subject	L7-991
dc.subject	Education
dc.subject	L
dc.subject	DOAJ:Education
dc.subject	DOAJ:Social Sciences
dc.subject	Education (General)
dc.subject	L7-991
dc.subject	Education
dc.subject	L
dc.subject	DOAJ:Education
dc.subject	DOAJ:Social Sciences
dc.subject	Education (General)
dc.subject	L7-991
dc.subject	Education
dc.subject	L
dc.subject	Education (General)
dc.subject	L7-991
dc.subject	Education
dc.subject	L
dc.subject	Education (General)
dc.subject	L7-991
dc.subject	Education
dc.subject	L
dc.title	Exploration of factors that affect the comparative effectiveness of physical and virtual manipulatives in an undergraduate laboratory
dc.type	article