Developing Concepts in Physics Through Virtual Lab Experiment: An Effectiveness Study

For physics learning, labs plays very active and significant role as it is essential to develop concepts and principles because students are continuously required to identify the hidden concepts, define and explain underlying laws and theories using high level reasoning skills. It is time and again observed that traditional real time physics laboratory has some limitations and problems in developing these concepts etc. In present given scenario of ICT, virtual lab through computer simulation based method of teaching physics is emerging as one of the most powerful method of experimentation in lab. The present study was conducted to see the effectiveness of virtual lab for developing concepts in physics. The main purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of Virtual Lab for students’ understanding of concepts of physics. The findings of the present study clearly revealed that student learned concepts of photoelectric effect through virtual lab in a better way as compared to real lab. The study also suggested the use of virtual labs in physics teaching, especially for teaching of concepts.