Exploring how students interact with guidance in a physics simulation: evidence from eye-movement and log data analyses

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to explore how students interacted with guidance to conduct a scientific inquiry in a physics simulation by using the eye-tracking techniques. The participants were 51 7th graders, and an eye-tracking system was used to record their visual behaviors and log data while they were using the simulation. As for data analysis, we first checked each participant’s log data to examine whether they completed the requirement of the guidance, and then checked the correctness of her/his answer to the inquiry task. The participants were thus divided into two groups (correct vs. wrong), and the patterns of their visual behaviors were examined by a set of eye-movement indices, normalized heat maps and lag sequential analyses. The results indicate that both spatial distributions and temporal sequences of the participants’ visual attention were associated with their performances on the inquiry task. Regarding the spatial distribution, the correct group tended to allocate more visual attention to the regions presenting the target phenomenon than the wrong group. Concerning the temporal sequence, the correct group tended to make more visual transitions among the content of the guidance, the relevant control panels and the target phenomena than the wrong group.

KEYWORDS:

• Physics
• simulation
• inquiry
• eye-tracking
• learning analytics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan under the following grant numbers: MOST 105-2628-S-003-004-MY3, 106-2511-S-003-064-MY3 and 106-2628-S-020-001-MY3. It was also supported by the ‘Institute for Research Excellence in Learning Sciences’ of NTNU sponsored by the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Taiwan.

Notes on contributors

Guo-Li Chiou

Guo-Li Chiou is currently an Associate Professor at the Program of Learning Sciences, School of Learning Informatics, National Taiwan Normal University. His research focuses on how students learn science, particularly on mental models of physical phenomena and systems. Currently, Professor Chiou is working on how students learn physics in digital environments, with particular emphases on simulation-based and game-based physics learning. In addition, he uses eye-tracking techniques to record and analyze students’ visual behaviors while reading and solving physics problems.

Chung-Yuan Hsu

Chung-Yuan Hsu is currently an Associate Professor at the National Pingtung University of Science and Technology. His research focuses on the designs of simulation-based and game-based learning environments, online inquiry learning analytics, and teacher education in educational technology. Recently, he has attempted to use eye-tracking technology to track and analyze how students interacted with the scaffolding designed in game-based learning environments.

Meng-Jung Tsai

Meng-Jung Tsai is a Distinguished Professor at the Program of Learning Sciences, School of Learning Informatics, National Taiwan Normal University. Her research interests centered at information literacy education and learning analytics. She has used eye-tracking technology to examine learners’ visual behaviors in digital learning environments such as multimedia-based learning, web-based inquiry learning and game-based learning. Recently, she is interested in examining the role of human factors such as self-efficacy played in human visual behaviors.