Effects of Virtual Laboratory Experiments on Students’ Academic Performance in Physics Practical (Published)
This study investigates the effects of Virtual Laboratory Experiment (VLE) on senior secondary school students’ academic performance in Physics practical. It made use of pre-test-post-test quasi experimental design with two levels of treatment and control group. The accessible population was senior secondary school two (SSS2). Purposeful sampling was used to obtain a sample of three co-educational senior secondary schools from a local government area in Niger state, Nigeria for the study. Intact classes were used. The instrument employed for the study were conventional lesson plans, an adopted computer simulation package for the Virtual Laboratory Experiments (VLE) and Researcher Made Test of Academic Performance in Physics Practical (RMTAPP). The data collected were analysed using Descriptive Statistics, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) and t-test statistics. The result of the study revealed that, the teaching strategies have significant effects on SSS2 academic performance in Physics practical and that, a combination of VLE and Conventional method is the most effective, followed by VLE while the Conventional is the least effective. It reveals further that gender does not have significant effect on students’ academic performance in Physics practical. The study therefore recommends that, Physics teachers should employ combination of VLE and Conventional teaching method to teach Physics practical and that, in schools with non-availability/inadequacy of science equipment, VLE method should be employed among others.
Keywords: Conventional Teaching Method, academic performance and physics practical, virtual laboratory experiment (VLE)