Exploring How Mixed-Reality Technologies Can Help Students Understand Gas Phenomena Through Drawing and Explanation Tasks

• In Event: Roundtable Session 2
  In Roundtable Session: Connections Between Drawings and Written Text in Student-Generated Particle Model Realizations

Abstract

1. Objectives
This study investigates student learning about gas phenomena using mixed-reality labs that combine affordances of both virtual and physical experiences. We compared the learning outcomes of students who used the mixed-reality lab and others who used a purely virtual approach (same simulation using a mouse).
2. Perspective
We use the ‘Frame’ - a sensor-augmented virtual technology that harnesses physical interactions for controlling a molecular simulation . For example, students can control the temperature of virtual gas molecules by placing jars filled with hot or cold water near the computer sensor. They can also physically push on a spring connected to the Frame to increase the force on the virtual piston in the simulation, and use a syringe “air pump” to increase or decrease the number of molecules in the simulation.
3. Method of inquiry
Approximately 200 10th and 11th grade students across three public high schools in one district participated in the study. Students used either the Frame or the simulation lab as a replacement for a typical physical lab on the gas laws. We used a laboratory guides with items that asked students to connect molecular behaviors to observable phenomena.
3. Data sources
The curriculum followed a guided inquiry approach using predict-observe-explain-reflect patterns throughout the lab. Students both drew pictures and generated textual predictions of the molecular distribution of air in the cold room versus a hot room. Then conducted an activity with the technology, explained what they saw in the Frame/simulation, and reflected upon their initial prediction by adding or changing drawings and/or explanations as needed.
4. Results
Analysis of the laboratory guides revealed that many students held common alternative ideas about gases -for example: that air in a colder room would be bunched up or compacted as opposed to filling the space of the room as shown in figure 4a. After using the Frame/simulation, students were able to revise their initial ideas about air molecules and to offer revised textual explanations that align with their drawings (e.g. “The change is not nearly as drastic, the molecules move at different speeds and are spread out about the same”). The refined drawings added information about student understanding of the molecular level, as many refined text explanations were short (e.g. “they just change velocity”).
Students in the Frame group that held alternative ideas about temperature did not revise their predictions as often as the simulation group. From the students’ responses, it seems they have disregarded the instructions to keep the volume of the piston constant by holding the spring in place. In that case, the volume of the container decreases with the decrease in temperature, and students with an existing “bunching” idea saw a decrease in the overall volume as “bunching” even though the gas molecules still filled the size of the container.
5. Scholarly significance
Our study highlights some conceptual issues that emerge in mixed-reality labs, and are absent in sterile, virtual simulations. The results also show that student drawings are crucial for identifying flaws in mental models of particle behavior in gases.

Author

• Jennifer L. Chiu, University of Virginia