Blended learning and simulation for teaching electrical concepts to high school pupils

Abstract

Teaching physical science has been challenging for educators for quite some time, andwith the Covid-19 pandemic, the situation has even worsened which made the adoption of blended learning in the different cycles of education only a matter of time. This paradigm requires nevertheless a certain command when it comes to using some specific tools dedicated to the simulation of some physical science knowledge laboratories. Theobjective of this research is to study the effect of integrating the “Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis” simulator tool in a blended learning environment on the conceptual learning of electricity. To achieve this goal, we adopted a quantitative methodology to assess the outcome of the experience which involved 40 pupils. The experimental group teacher used blended learning and integrated the simulation to teachthe electricity module. The same teacher adopted traditional teaching with the control group (40 pupils). The instrument used is a test instrument in the form of a quiz which consists of 20 questions. All questions were in the form of multiple-choice questions to facilitate a more efficient analysis. The results of this research report the positive effects of integrating simulation into a blended learning environment with a statistically significantdifference. Moreover, the experiment shows that 90 per cent of the pupils in the experimental group passed the test, as opposed to 75 per cent of the control group.