The Effects on Students’ Conceptual Understanding of Electric Circuits of Introducing Virtual Manipulatives Within a Physical Manipulatives-Oriented Curriculum

Abstract

This study investigates whether Virtual Manipulatives (VM) within a Physical Manipulatives (PM)-oriented curriculum affect conceptual understanding of electric circuits and related experimentation processes. A pre–post comparison study randomly assigned 194 undergraduates in an introductory physics course to one of five conditions: three experimental conditions with different PM and VM sequences and two control conditions with only PM or VM. Conceptual tests assessed students’ understanding. Instructors’ journals, video data, and interviews provided process-related data. Results showed interplay between manipulative and circuit types. For simple circuits, PM and VM use similarly impacted students’ understanding. However, VM better facilitated understanding than PM for complex circuits: PM users, unlike VM users, encountered process-related problems that prevented development of an appropriate conceptual model because only VM afforded a view of current-flow. When students used VM before PM for complex circuits, they developed the appropriate conceptual model to use in the PM phase.

Notes

For a very few experiments from the curriculum, the software could not provide all the material needed for the experimental setup; hence, interactive simulations were developed and used to complement the Virtual Labs Electricity software. These simulations worked in the same manner as Virtual Labs Electricity (by clicking on icons representing electrical parts and moving the parts to the desired position in the circuit) and offered the same unique affordance (i.e., a view of the current flow).

Each excerpt provided follows the same transcription conventions: (a) the text in brackets (e.g., [PM]) clarifies what the interviewees were referring to, (b) the three periods in a series denotes ellipsis, which is an intentional omission of details (i.e., a word, a sentence, or a whole section from text) from the excerpt without altering its original meaning, and (c) the three periods in a bracket ([…]) denote that part of the conversation is intentionally omitted. The excerpt of each interviewee concerns a separate conversation.