PhET interactive simulation approach in teaching electricity and magnetism among science teacher education students

By boosting students' thinking and understanding of hard ideas, innovative teaching pedagogies help them better comprehend difficult subjects in Physics. This study aimed to assess the students’ conceptual knowledge in electricity and magnetism and their perspectives on the effects of the Phet Simulation Approach in teaching the said concepts. It utilized educational action research design with assessment-tests and a structured-interview guide as the main instruments in gathering the required data. There are 14 science teacher education students whose taking electricity and magnetism as their major subject served as participants. The assessment-test is composed of the traditional assessment test or multiple-choice test composed of 60 questions. The structured-interview guide contains one question, "What are the effects of Phet Simulation Approach in learning Electricity and Magnetism?” The results have revealed that the conceptual knowledge in Electricity and Magnetism improved to very satisfactory after the application of intervention. There is a significant difference in the assessment scores between pre-test and posttest. Six themes emerged from the students' perspectives on the effects of the intervention, including (a) better understanding; (b) learning through visualization; (c) learning became fun; (d) promotes self-facilitation of learning; (e) provides a broader range of options; and (f) grasping the micro-scale concepts. The study concludes that PhET Simulation Approach is an effective teaching strategy in electricity and magnetism. Further, the strategy is positively accepted by the students based on the qualitative data

A controlled study of virtual reality in first-year magnetostatics

Stereoscopic virtual reality (VR) has experienced a resurgence due to flagship products such as the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and smartphone-based VR solutions like Google Cardboard. This is causing the question to resurface: how can stereoscopic VR be useful in instruction, if at all, and what are the pedagogical best practices for its use? To address this, and to continue our work in this sphere, we performed a study of 289 introductory physics students who were sorted into three different treatment types: stereoscopic virtual reality, WebGL simulation, and static 2D images, each designed to provide information about magnetic fields and forces. Students were assessed using preliminary items designed to focus on heavily-3D systems. We report on assessment reliability, and on student performance. Overall, we find that students who used VR did not significantly outperform students using other treatment types. There were significant differences between sexes, as other studies have noted. Dependence on students' self-reported 3D videogame play was observed, in keeping with previous studies, but this dependence was not restricted to the VR treatment.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, submitted to the 2019 Physics Education Research Conferenc

Inservice workshop for high school physics teachers : an evaluation

The primary purpose of this study was to determine the short-term and long-term changes in content knowledge of physics teachers who participated in a 5-day inservice workshop. The study examined the relationships between participants’ content knowledge changes and physics teaching experience, formal academic preparation, and materials development and teaching. The study also compared participants' performance on conceptual questions and analytical problems. The subjects consisted of 22 high school physics teachers who participated in an inquiry inservice workshop held at North Carolina State University in 1988. Analysis of the data consisted of comparisons between the pretest scores and both the short-term and long-term posttest scores to determine content knowledge changes in each of the physics topic areas studied. To test for statistical significance between pretest and posttests, a one-tailed dependent t test was used

CWU Faculty Senate Minutes - 05/16/1984

These are the official Central Washington University Faculty Senate Minutes for the 05/16/1984 regular meeting

Investigating First-Year Engineering Students\u27 Educational Technology Use and Academic Achievement: Development and Validation of an Assessment Tool

Increasing the number of Americans who graduate with a degree in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) is of compelling national interest as the world is becoming more technologically-dependent. As society changes there is a continual need for new devices, tools, and services. Therefore, what is represented as “technology” constantly changes. The underlying meaning of technology is fairly stable, but the term is employed differently across context and application. In society, a variety of technologies are used to provide people with things like food, healthcare, shelter, transportation, and entertainment. In educational settings, computers and other information technologies help individuals learn, teach, and communicate. Since technology is ever-changing and context-specific, this paper describes the development and validation of a particular assessment tool – one focused on the specific types of and ways that educational technology is used by first-year engineering students (FYES). More specifically, the assessment tool was used in an investigation of the relationship between first-year engineering students’ perceived (a) knowledge, (b) usefulness, as well as (c) frequency and nature of use of technology and their academic achievement (i.e., grades). Differences were analyzed by race/ethnicity and gender. After distributing the assessment tool and collecting data from nearly 500 students, results revealed there are significant racial/ethnic differences in FYES’ perceived usefulness as well as frequency and nature of use of technology. There are also significant gender differences in FYES’ perceived knowledge and usefulness of technology. Furthermore, FYES’ background characteristics significantly predict their final course grades in the second of two introductory engineering courses

CWU Faculty Senate Minutes - 03/16/1983

These are the official Central Washington University Faculty Senate Minutes for the 03/16/1983 regular meeting

Robotics in the classroom: The effectiveness of robotics based curriculum in STEM education

Students learn best when they are engaged and are able to interact with their environment. They can build their own definition of concepts and themes, which are more meaningful because they are related to their own experiences and memories (Kolb, 1984). Simply put it all comes down to constructivism, which means a person builds knowledge and meaning from interactions between their experiences and ideas (the environment they work/play in and the people and objects they interact with). The purpose of this study is to find out how a middle school and high school constructivist robotics curriculum impacts students’ conceptual understanding of electrical circuit concepts