Designing a virtual laboratory-based learning environment and its effect on motivation to progress in science courses

Subject Areas : Learning

Narges Feizabadi ¹ , zahra jamebozorg ² , fatemeh jafarkhani ³

1 - Ph. D Candidate of educational technology of Allameh tabataba'I University; Tehran; Iran.
2 - Associate Professor of educational technology of Allameh tabataba'I University; Tehran; Iran.
3 - Assistant professor of educational technology of Allameh tabataba'I University; Tehran; Iran.

Received: 2023-08-14 Accepted : 2023-12-23 Published : 2023-12-23

Keywords: educational design, Virtual Laboratory, motivation to progress, : learning environment design, science lesson, Bybee,

Abstract :

The expansion of the use of virtual technologies in education has made education available to learners at any time and any place The purpose of this research was to investigate the effect of designing a learning environment based on a virtual laboratory on the progress motivation of fifth grade elementary school students in science. The current research is practical and semi-experimental. For this purpose, a pre-test-post-test plan with a control group was used. The socio-statistics included all fifth grade female students of Karaj primary school. 40 people from the mentioned society were selected through purposeful sampling and randomly assigned to two control and experimental groups. The instrument used included the achievement motivation questionnaire with confirmed validity and reliability. At first, both groups completed the progress motivation questionnaire as a pre-test. Then, for the experiment group, the activities and experiments of the science book were designed in virtual form. At the end, the progress motivation questionnaire was given to the students of both groups as a post-test. The collected data were analyzed using the statistical test of univariate covariance with the help of spss version 18 software. The result of the research showed that there is a difference between the progress motivation of the two control and experimental groups in the post-test, and this difference is significant (a=0.05: p-value=0.001); This means that the design of the learning environment based on the virtual laboratory designed on the basis of Bayabi's design model has improved the motivation of students to progress in the science course. Therefore, it is recommended to the teachers and training providers to design and use a virtual laboratory based on the Bayabi design model to improve the motivation of students to progress in science lessons.