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

 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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