Effects of Writing to Learn Activities in Hands-on and Virtual Laboratory Environments

Year 2018, Volume: 9 , 48 - 51, 18.08.2018

Hasan Ozgur Kapici Ece Ebrar Koca Hakan Akcay

Abstract

The Science Writing Heuristic (SWH)
approach mainly developed by Hand and Keys (1999). The approach involves two
sets for both teachers and students to be mindfully active in an inquiry based
laboratory environments. The set for students provides scaffolds in written
form in order to help metacognition about their lab experiments (Hohenshell
& Hand, 2006) and the set for teachers enable them to design inquiry based
science laboratories. In the current study, it was investigated that the
effects of SWH approach in hands-on and virtual lab environments on pre-service
science teachers’ laboratory skills and science achievements. Quasi-experimental
research design was used in the current study. Participants of the study were 52
pre-service science teachers. They were assigned into two groups, one of which
them used hands-on laboratory environment, coded as control group. The other
group used virtual laboratory environment called as experimental group. The
attitude scale towards laboratory skills and the achievement test were used in
the study. Overall results indicated that SWH based lab
environments are equally effective on students’ attitudes and achievements.  

Keywords

Science writing heuristic, hands-on lab, Virtual lab, Attitude, Achievement

References

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