Virtues of Virtual Labs
Inquiry using simulations helped vocational students grasp concepts and solve complex problems.
By Bas Kollöffel and Ton de Jong
Traditionally, engineering curricula use textbook instruction and hands-on lessons, which are often effective approaches for teaching terms and definitions and the procedural use of formulas. As noted by teachers and as found in several studies, however, students often fail to develop conceptual understanding. Inquiry learning is regarded as an instructional approach that stimulates students to acquire conceptual insights by having them conduct real investigations. Performing adequate inquiry in physical laboratories is a challenging task for students, however. Virtual laboratories, based on simulations, offer an alternative that allows students to easily set up and carry out experiments with associated support for the inquiry process.
In this study, we examined students’ acquisition of conceptual understanding about electrical circuits. The students were enrolled in an engineering track at the secondary vocational education level. We hypothesized that adding inquiry learning in a virtual lab would be more effective than relying on traditional instruction alone.
Students were randomly assigned to one of two conditions in a quasi-experimental study. Students in both conditions followed the full, regular electricity curriculum. This curriculum included topics such as circuits, resistance, Ohm’s law, and Kirchhoff’s laws. In the traditional condition, the curriculum was supplemented with computer-based practice that offered students traditional exercises for each chapter of their textbook. In the virtual lab condition, the standard curriculum was supplemented with inquiry learning in a virtual lab. In the virtual lab environment, students were presented with electrical circuits. They could add or remove electrical components (e.g., light bulbs, resistors), adjust the voltage, and perform measurements using virtual equipment to measure voltage across components and the strength of the current flowing through different parts of the circuit. The images of real equipment made the virtual lab highly realistic. Students were supported in their inquiry processes by a series of assignments that were integrated within the virtual lab environment and designed to structure their experimentation processes.
Results from 43 students were included in the analysis and showed that students in the virtual lab condition scored significantly higher on conceptual understanding and on procedural skills. In particular, students in this condition scored higher on solving complex problems; on simple problems no differences between conditions were found. Our findings are in line with a growing body of evidence on the effectiveness of virtual laboratories and corroborate the idea that active investigation and experimentation are successful ways to foster the acquisition of conceptual understanding.
That students also developed better procedural skills than students in the traditional condition was a bit unexpected but supports the idea that conceptual understanding and procedural skills develop in an iterative fashion. This effect makes the potential virtue of inquiry learning in virtual labs even more attractive. Our effects were obtained with a group of vocational education students who are often qualified as being more “doers” than “learners” and who are usually considered less prepared for the more scientific approach that is required by inquiry learning.
On the basis of the current study, we recommend that teachers in vocational education who want to stimulate conceptual understanding supplement or perhaps interweave their traditional approach with inquiry learning within a virtual lab. It is often assumed that inquiry learning is too demanding for students at this level, but our study shows that if the inquiry component is well supported, it will also work in vocational education settings.
Bas Kollöffel was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Twente, the Netherlands, Department of Instructional Technology. Ton de Jong is a professor of educational psychology and chairs the department. This is an excerpt from “Conceptual Understanding of Electrical Circuits in Secondary Vocational Engineering Education: Combining Traditional Instruction with Inquiry Learning in a Virtual Lab,” in the July 2013 Journal of Engineering Education. The work was supported by Kennisnet, a Dutch public educational organization.