Abstract
This study investigated the efficacy of a real-time, interactive visuohaptic simulation to teach students particulate motion and the concepts of thermal energy, pressure, and random motion. Students were able to experience forces through their own somatosensory system in real time. Participants included 78 middle school students who completed a pre-, post-, and delayed post-assessment of knowledge and a post-assessment of attitudes and investigated particle motion using either the visuohaptic or a control visual simulation. The results showed that there were significant gains in the knowledge of thermal energy, pressure, and random motion for both groups of students from pre- to post-assessment. There were no significant differences in post scores between those students that used visuohaptic technology compared to those in the control group who used only a visual simulation. However, students in the visuohaptic group reported that the investigation was highly interesting and enabled them to better understand particle motion as well as visualize movement. The role of haptic instructional technologies as tools to teach micro- and human-scale phenomena is discussed.
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This work was supported in part by NSF grant DRL-1043026.
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Jones, M.G., Childers, G., Emig, B., Chevrier, J., Stevens, V., Tan, H. (2016). The Efficacy of Visuohaptic Simulations in Teaching Concepts of Thermal Energy, Pressure, and Random Motion. In: Papadouris, N., Hadjigeorgiou, A., Constantinou, C. (eds) Insights from Research in Science Teaching and Learning. Contributions from Science Education Research, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20074-3_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20074-3_6
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