A study on the impact of real, virtual and comprehensive experimenting on students’ conceptual understanding of DC electric circuits and their skills in undergraduate electricity laboratory

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the comparative value of performing electricity laboratory by physical, virtual and comprehensive (combination of virtual and physical) methods with respect to changes in students ‘conceptual understanding of DC electric circuits and their skills. To achieve these, a pre–post comparison test (DIRECT V1.2) and final skill test that include coordinated tasks of assembling a real circuit and describing how it worked, were used that involved 100 undergraduate students. At the end of the study by means of statistical tests, we observed considerable changes in comprehensive group's learning and virtual group's skill in comparison with the other groups.