TEACHERS’ PERCEPTION ON DEVELOPING AND
IMPLEMENTING VIRTUAL EXPERIMENTS
Mihai Bîzoi, Ana-Maria Suduc and Gabriel Gorghiu
Automatic Control, Informatics and Electrical Engineering Department, Valahia University, 130082, Targoviste, Romania
Keywords: Virtual experiments, Comenius 2.1 Project.
Abstract: Technological progress has allowed the emergence of new approaches to teaching. The virtual instruments
development has led to lessons based on virtual experiments - applications that simulates real-life
phenomenon and are specially designed for students use. Many virtual experiments can be obtained free of
charge from the Internet, but their use in the classroom involves more than these tools availability. It
involves the use of new teaching techniques and training materials. Through a European project, hundreds
of teachers of sciences were trained to develop and implement virtual experiments in the classroom. This
paper presents some of the expectations of teachers before the start of the training course and their opinion
after the class implementation.
1 INTRODUCTION
Following clear evidence, Science is relying on
experiments, observation and experimental results.
Therefore, it is not possible to develop specific
principles or laws without checking them in practice,
but in many cases, this can cover a significant period
of time.
From the scientific point of view, an experiment
represents a caused observation, a searching or
testing action for finding evidences. However, it is a
deliberate provocation, under specified conditions of
a phenomenon, having as purpose to observe its
behaviour, to test the causal relations, to discover its
essence and to verify some hypotheses (Cerghit,
1980).
In education, Science subjects are presented and
taught with various degrees of simplification.
However, just as in scientific research, the
experiment retains a central role, and is indeed
indispensable, in the teaching of Science area,
regardless of the degree of rigor (Chiaverina &
Vollmer, 2005).
In the last decade, virtual experiments were
introduced in education on a large scale. They
represent an alternative or complementary resource
in the study of phenomena and processes which exist
in the nature. Generally, virtual experiments are
recommended to be used in the following
circumstances: (a) when they help the effective
implementation of the (real) experiments, allowing
in this way the users to control a number of factors
that influence the studied phenomena; (b) in the case
of existing resources which do not allow the
implementation of experiments that are necessary to
understand the studied phenomena; (c) when the
implementation of the real experiments can be
dangerous for the users’ health.
Despite the fact that the concept of Virtual
Instrumentation was introduced about twenty years
ago by National Instruments (with the introduction
of LabVIEW), most of the virtual experiments
developed not only for education but especially for
engineering have not been assumed and presented as
open sources. Just in the last years, some
applications could be retrieved (on Internet) as free
of charge and introduced in Science studies step-by-
step. Taking also into consideration that “Europe
needs an adequate throughput of mathematics and
scientific specialists in order to maintain its
competitiveness” and “the increasing importance of
open learning environments in education“ (Report,
2001), 9 European partners (from Romania, Spain,
Poland, Finland and Greece) proposed a
transnational European Socrates Comenius 2.1:
“VccSSe - Virtual Community Collaborating Space
for Science Education” (128989-CP-1-2006-1-RO-
COMENIUS-C21), with a view to present the
potential offered by virtual experiments for science
education and also to promote an open educational
133
Bîzoi M., Suduc A. and Gorghiu G. (2010).
TEACHERS’ PERCEPTION ON DEVELOPING AND IMPLEMENTING VIRTUAL EXPERIMENTS.
In Proceedings of the Multi-Conference on Innovative Developments in ICT, pages 133-136
DOI: 10.5220/0003034301330136
Copyright
c
SciTePress
resource for the European academic space (Gorghiu,
2009).
The science teachers’ training in using virtual
experiments in their classrooms within VccSSe
project showed how valuable these tools are and
their potential to improve students’ learning
behaviour, teaching strategy, learning results,
students’ motivation and so on. In the following
there will be presented the context in which these
results were obtained and the figures of these results.
2 THE VCCSSE PROJECT - AN
OPEN EDUCATIONAL SPACE
FOR VIRTUAL EXPERIMENTS
The VccSSe Project had as main objective to adapt,
develop, test, implement and disseminate training
modules, teaching methodologies and pedagogical
strategies based on the use of virtual instruments,
with the view to implement them in the classroom,
through ICT (Information and Communications
Technologies) tools (VccSSe, 2009).
The most important outcome of the project was
represented by the creation and development of the
training course “Virtual Instrumentation in Science
Education”, dedicated to in-service science teachers
from all the educational levels in the project
partners’ countries.
The course had introduced specific concepts
related to virtual instruments / experiments,
available software packages and web examples,
pedagogical methods and didactical elements for the
selected virtual instrumentation educational
platforms: Cabri Geometry II Plus, Crocodile Clips,
LabView and GeoGebra (Gorghiu et al., 2009). 363
science teachers were enrolled at the starting point
of the course.
At the same time, the project team developed the
e-Space, a repository of virtual experiments that
were used as examples in the context of training - in
fact, a valuable database which contains virtual
experiments offered as examples for the teachers
who participated to the course, structured per areas
(Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Technology)
and related categories. The e-Space includes a
search engine which allows the searching of virtual
instrumentation (VI) examples by: description,
author, keyword and language (partners’ languages:
English, Romanian, Spanish, Polish, Finnish and
Greek) (Suduc, Bîzoi & Gorghiu, 2008).
In addition, a database with Virtual experiments
(Teachers’ Products Matrix), containing 218 final
products designed by 206 teachers who finalized the
training sessions, was developed as an open resource
for all the science teachers interested in introducing
virtual experiments in their lessons and not only.
Together with 50 representative video-experiments
related to the implementation of virtual experiments
in lessons and 9 On-line / Remote Simulating
Laboratories (produced by the project partnership),
all of them grouped as VccSSe Exhibition, it closes
the open educational space created in the frame of
the VccSSe project and dedicated to the promoting
of virtual experiments in European science
education.
This educational space, even mainly dedicated to
science teachers, is a great space of resources for
any person searching a deeper understanding of
different science concepts (to complete or to add
new knowledge).
3 MATERIALS AND METHODS
In order to assess the pedagogical use of virtual
experiments, the teachers who attended the “Virtual
Instrumentation in Science Education” training
modules expressed their feedback in three specific
web-evaluation questionnaires: the initial one
(before the course), the final questionnaire (at the
end of the course) and the impact questionnaire
(after classroom implementation).
The questionnaires included particularly
questions dedicated for evaluating the level of their
knowledge acquisition on creating and using virtual
experiments in the classroom, achieving the goals
and purposes of the training modules and rating the
presented virtual instrumentation software (Olteanu
et al., 2009).
All data were collected using web forms and the
information gathered was centralized in the
database.
In the following section, there is presented a part
of the teachers’ answers to the initial and impact
questionnaires.
4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
The initial evaluation questionnaire included,
besides the questions meant to evaluate the course
participants background regarding the use of ICT
and virtual instrumentation in the classroom, two
open questions about the teachers’ expectations: (a)
“What do you expect from the course as far as you
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are concerned?” and (b) “As far as your students are
concerned, what do you expect from applying the
instruments you will learn about on the course?”.
Only 5% of participants said they do not know or
have not filled those fields in the questionnaire.
Teachers’ expectations from the course can be
framed in several categories: (a) 29% of the teachers
hoped that virtual experiments usage will increase
their ICT skills, in general; (b) 28% believed that
students will more easily understand ICT-based
methodologies and they will use more effective the
computer; (c) 35% attended the course to learn how
to design ICT lessons and how to create virtual
experiments for that kind of lessons; (d) 37% wanted
to improve their skills and to learn new pedagogical
methods and techniques to be applied in the
classroom; (e) 4% hoped they will learn to use some
modelling and simulations software; (f) 5%
considered that the course will improve their
computer use skills; (g) and 10% hoped to obtain
access to resources that can be used in their school
and by others.
Regarding their expectations from applying the
instruments which will be taught about on the
course, the teachers’ answers were summarized as
follow: (a) 24% hoped that using virtual instruments
will increase the students’ capacity of understanding
and solving the problems; (b) only 6% considered
that their new knowledge will optimize the learning
process; (c) 22% hoped that students will acquire
skills for effective use of ICT; (d) 20% thought that
students will more easily interpret phenomena
experienced; (e) 41% believed that the use of virtual
experiments will stimulate students' creativity, their
desire to experience new things, will motivate them
and will promote active learning; and (f) 22%
thought that VI will increase students' interest in
science subjects in general (Mathematics, Physics,
Chemistry, Technology in this case).
After completing the course, teachers have
implemented in the classroom the knowledge
gained. Based on the experience in the classroom
they have been evaluated once more, through the
impact questionnaire web form. To the questions of
this web form, 143 science teachers gave their
answers.
The first question aimed to evaluate the
importance of virtual instrumentation for teachers.
62% of the teachers considered “to great extend” the
virtual instrumentation as a source of inspiration for
them (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Virtual instrumentation is a source of inspiration
for you?
Figure 2 presents teachers’ opinions regarding
two issues: (1) Virtual instrumentation is a good
method to improve students' learning skills, and (2)
Virtual instrumentation is improving students'
conceptual understanding.
Figure 2: Student’s activity improvement.
To both questions, 58% of the teachers (82,
respectively 83 of the total number of the teachers,
which is 143) responded “to great extent” and only
5% responded “not at all” and “very little”.
Therefore the great majority of the respondents
observed a real improvement in students' learning
skills and students' conceptual understanding when
using virtual experiments in the classroom.
Figure 3 presents the teachers’ answers to the
following question: “To what extent has the
implementation of virtual experiments in the
classroom improved the quality of the following...?”.
The statements with the corresponding numbers in
the figure are: (1) Students' learning behaviour; (2)
Your teaching strategy; (3) Classroom organization;
(4) Students' cooperative work; (5) Students'
learning results; (6) Students' learning products and
(7) Students' motivation.
64% of the teachers that used virtual experiments
in the classroom observed that there is a big quality
improvement in student’s motivation and 34%
TEACHERS' PERCEPTION ON DEVELOPING AND IMPLEMENTING VIRTUAL EXPERIMENTS
135
considered that student’s learning results increased
significantly.
Figure 3: Improvement in quality in the classroom.
It can be observed that no teacher considered that
the implementation of virtual experiments in the
classroom did not improve at all the quality of the
learning results and neither the students’ motivation.
5 CONCLUSIONS
The results of this study show that virtual
instrumentation applications are a real source of
inspiration in teaching actions that should be used as
an alternative and complementary instrument to
traditional tools, and as a mean for improving
students’ understanding of science abstract concepts.
Virtual experiments are improving students’
motivation for learning, in creating and maintaining
students’ interest for science topics as well in
obtaining better results in evaluation.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was funded through the Socrates-
Comenius 2.1. European project 128989-CP-1-2006-
1-RO-COMENIUS-C21: “VccSSe - Virtual
Community Collaborating Space for Science
Education”. The support offered by the European
Commission, Education and Training, School
Education: Socrates: Comenius and the Education,
Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency as
responsible for the management of EU’s
programmes in the fields of education, culture and
audiovisual, through the project mentioned above is
gratefully acknowledged.
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