Preparation and compilation of electronic content
Z. Rahbar; F. Ahmadi Kalateh Ahmad; M. Saidi
Abstract
Background and Objectives: The emergence of COVID-19 has brought about a sudden shift to e-learning and virtual platforms. Teachers play a key role in developing e-learning content. Hence, they must be familiar with the theories related to the cognitive constructs and e-learning principles to both facilitate ...
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Background and Objectives: The emergence of COVID-19 has brought about a sudden shift to e-learning and virtual platforms. Teachers play a key role in developing e-learning content. Hence, they must be familiar with the theories related to the cognitive constructs and e-learning principles to both facilitate the learning process and enhance the rate of learning and retention among the students. The cognitive load might increase unless the e-learning and experiential content is not developed according to the cognitive load theory, particularly for teaching physics as a field that requires multimodal presentation of the content. This might hinder the students’ learning and retention. In other words, if the principles of cognitive load theory are not observed in the design of electronic and multimedia content of course materials, the learning process will be disturbed and damaged due to the production of additional load beyond the memory capacity of the learners. The current study aimed to develop e-learning content for a concept in physics (e.g. pressure) based on the cognitive load theory. It further attempted to explore its possible impact on the learners’ levels of learning (knowledge, understanding, application) and the degree of their retention.Materials and Methods: The study adopted a quasi-experimental pre-test post-test design with an experimental and a control group. The statistical population included all female ninth graders in district 17, Tehran, the capital of Iran. The sample consisted of 120 learners via multistage stratified random sampling procedures. The participants were assigned to experimental and control groups. To gather the required data, a researcher-made test was used and its reliability was calculated via Cronbach’s alpha as 0.85. The students took part in a three-week virtual empirical sciences course comprising six sixty-minute sessions. Before offering the course, the educational objectives of chapter 8 of the empirical sciences textbook in the ninth grade related to the subject “pressure” were determined using the teacher’s manual and eliciting the experienced sciences and physics teachers’ expert comments. Then, their level of cognitive processing was identified based on Bloom’s taxonomy. The objectives were categorized into three groups of knowledge, understanding, and application. To analyze the data, analysis of covariance and an independent samples t-test were used via SPSS (20.00).Findings: The results of the analysis of covariance for learning levels (knowledge, understanding, and application) demonstrated that developing e-learning materials based on the cognitive load theory enhanced the learners’ levels of learning in the experimental group compared to those in the control group (P < 0.05). Moreover, the results of an independent samples t-test for the delayed post-test revealed a significant difference between the participants in experimental and control groups in terms of their degree of retention (P < 0.01).Conclusions: The findings implied that considering the principles of the cognitive load theory in developing e-learning materials for physics would positively influence the learners’ levels of learning and their degree of retention. Therefore, it is recommended to designers of e-learning content to consider the principles of cognitive load theory in the design and production of their content.
Educational Technology
M. Jahanifar; M. Hormozi Nejad
Abstract
Background and Objectives: Computer modelling helps a lot in learning comprehensive scientific concepts, including the causal mechanisms of phenomena, which is challenging for novice learners. Despite the many studies that have been published to show the effectiveness of using computers in the classroom, ...
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Background and Objectives: Computer modelling helps a lot in learning comprehensive scientific concepts, including the causal mechanisms of phenomena, which is challenging for novice learners. Despite the many studies that have been published to show the effectiveness of using computers in the classroom, fewer studies have investigated the use of computer modelling and its effects on students' thinking. The causal structure of many natural and physics phenomena, the emphasis of science education standards on systems thinking development, and its improvement in students, the key role of causal reasoning in a better understanding of science, the increasing use of computer technologies in the physics classroom, the rapid development of computer software and Internet systems for modelling and simulating the real world in order to help physics teaching and learning, and to solve the shortcomings of paper modelling with the help of computers, prompted researchers to investigate the effectiveness of using computer modelling in the physics classroom to see how it would improve the students’ causal reasoning. Investigating the effectiveness of computer modelling on students' understanding of causal links and reasoning in physics phenomena is the main goal of this research.Methods: A sample of 80 secondary high school students in the 11th grade was selected and participated in a semi-experimental design, consisting of two classes of 20 students (using computer modelling) and two classes of 20 students (using conceptual modelling on paper). The students' scores of the causal reasoning were collected in pre-test and post-test; to remove the pre-test effect (mental retention of answers), analysis of covariance was used. In this analysis, the effect of the pre-test scores on the post-test scores was first predicted with the help of simple linear regression, and after removing this effect, the difference between the post-test mean values of causal reasoning between the groups was explored with the analysis of variance. In this research, the mean difference was investigated both for the type of modelling (computer and paper) and for gender; therefore, due to having two independent variables, the analysis of covariance was two-way. With this analysis, the effect of the interaction between the gender variable and the teaching method was also measured.Findings: Compared to paper modelling, computer modelling was effective in increasing students' ability to present coherent causal expressions and better explanations of scientific evidence and ideas, and enriched their systems thinking. Recognizing the reasoning elements, gathering evidence and expressing their reasons in order to end reasoning, as well as the coherence of reasoning, were more difficult for students who were trained with paper modelling than for those who were trained with the help of computer modelling. The findings showed that the connection among the pieces of evidence was one of the most difficult parts of physics reasoning. In fact, the student's ability to integrate the pieces of evidence in order to conclude the argument and express the result was less than their other reasoning abilities. However, computer modelling could improve this ability better than paper modellingConclusion: This quasi-experimental design helped us to reach important conclusions about the differences in causal reasoning between two different groups. Using computer tools can handle the learning of relatively complex cognitive skills such as causal reasoning. Computer simulation and conceptual models that are produced with computers can help to explain more causal links and more coherence of reasoning in physics classrooms. Therefore, we recommend curriculum designers and physics teachers use more computer simulation and modelling in order to strengthen system thinking in physics classrooms, and scientific explanations with the help of causal reasoning.
Curriculum Planning
S. Sayyedi; F. Ahmadi; S. Nasri; M. Sadrolashrafi
Abstract
Nowadays، in an effort to improve learning process، application of the new and active techniques in teaching methods، instead of the traditional method of teaching is essential. One of the active teaching methods to science teaching is hands-on and laboratory methods. To improve some of the deficiencies ...
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Nowadays، in an effort to improve learning process، application of the new and active techniques in teaching methods، instead of the traditional method of teaching is essential. One of the active teaching methods to science teaching is hands-on and laboratory methods. To improve some of the deficiencies in the laboratories، the use of simple tools and hand-made instrument is suggested. In this regard، in this study it is trying to be reviewed the effect of using the experimental hand-made on the first year high school girl students'' academic achievement، knowledge، comprehension and application in the subject of light-refraction. This study was a quasi-experimental research and it’s method is Solomon four groups design and the population is all high school girl students in Dehgolan city and its suburbs to the number of cases is 527. The samples are four groups including 97 people. The school selecting as well as the class selecting and assigning them to experimental and control groups، is random sampling. Two experimental groups taught with the use of the hand-made and two control groups taught with traditional method. Results of the analyses showed that there was a significant difference at 0.05 percent (p< 0.05) between the experimental and control groups in academic achievement and application. The findings of study suggest that the teaching light-refraction by hand-made are more effective than the traditional teaching without using of hand-made to development of learning and application.
