Using Interactive Course Modules to Improve Students' Understanding of Electric Circuits

Offering safe, relatively inexpensive and reproducible teaching environment for exploring phenomena, interactive course modules are applications of special interest in education. Engineering and physics students usually have difficulty understating the topic of electrical circuits. There is limited evidence in the literature supporting the premise that utilizing interactive course modules improves student learning for the topic of electric circuits. Understanding the topic of electric circuits is important for high school students who plan to enter engineering programs at universities in Turkey since it is a topic covered at the university entrance exam conducted nationwide. Moreover the topic of electric circuits is taught in many engineering programs. This study explored the question that whether the achievement of students using interactive course module is different from the achievement of students taught with didactic teaching along with traditional teaching tools with fifty high school students. The pre-test/post-test with control group research design is used to investigate the research question. Findings revealed that utilizing interactive course modules to teach the topic of electric circuits is found to improve students learning better than teaching the same content with didactic teaching along with traditional teaching tools. Further research should be undertaken to compare the use of the simulations and real laboratory equipment.