Comparing the use of Virtual and Physical Manipulatives in Physics Education

The purpose of this study was to compare the effect of experimenting with Virtual Manipulatives (VM), Physical Manipulatives (PM), and two sequential combinations of PM and VM, on undergraduate students' understanding of scientific concepts in the domain of heat and temperature. A pre-post comparison study design was used, in which the experimentation manipulative - virtual and/or physical - was contrasted. The study involved 160 undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory physics course that was based upon the Physics by Inquiry curriculum (McDermott and The Physics Education Group, 1996). The participants were assigned to three experimental groups (EG1=50 students, EG2=30 students, EG3= 30 students) and a control group (CG=50 students). The CG used PM to conduct the experiments, whereas the EG1 used VM. The EG2 and EG3 used two different combinations of PM and VM to conduct the same experiments. Conceptual tests were administered to assess students' understanding before, during and after instruction. The data collected through the tests were analyzed quantitatively. Findings revealed that experimenting with Physical Manipulatives (PM), Virtual Manipulatives (VM) and the two sequential combinations of PM and VM were equally effective in promoting students' conceptual understanding in the domain of heat and temperature.