Search

The Ubiquitous-Physics (U-Physics) app was upgraded to help students in learning inclined plane concepts. The new version of U-Physics allows students to see the experimental data not only in a graphical representation but also in a tabular representation. U-Physics provides a whiteboard function to support data explanations. The study investigated the differences between experimental students who use U-Physics (EG) and control students who do not use the app (CG) in terms of learning achievements. Additionally, we studied the free body diagram ability of students by giving them a test and analyzed its relationship to inquiry behaviors (interpreting graphs, applying formulas, and drawing conclusions) and learning achievements. Two 11th-grade classes (EG = 15 and CG = 32) participated in this quasi-experimental design. Our findings showed that the students who use U-Physics performed better than those who do not use the app in terms of learning achievements. Inquiry behaviors have a significant correlation with students’ learning achievements, and drawing conclusions is a predictor to affect students’ learning achievements. Additionally, most students agreed that U-Physics is beneficial for their physics learning. Thus, we strongly suggest teachers to use U-Physics and involve inquiry behaviors in physics laboratories to enhance students’ inquiry thinking and learning achievements while conducting physics experiments.

The purpose of this study is to develop and validate an authentic contextual learning framework with six constructs to model the relationships among essential factors of authentic contextual learni...

Geometry students have few opportunities to apply geometric concepts and solve geometry problems in authentic contexts. We developed a Ubiquitous Geometry (UG) system to teach geometry to elementary students by using it to measure common objects in authentic contexts. The instant study investigates the effects of UG on student geometry estimation ability, geometry learning achievement, spatial ability, and learning geometric concepts and explores the correlations. Participants were 82 fifth grade students divided into the experiment group (EG), the ruler measurement group (RG), and the control group (CG). The results revealed that the EG students performed significantly better than the others in geometry estimation ability, geometry learning achievement, spatial ability, and understanding geometric concepts. We found that geometry estimation ability is significantly related to spatial ability and geometry learning achievement, which means fostering estimation ability through measuring authentic objects could help students to learn geometry. Finally, students perceived that UG engaged them more in geometry and improved their interest in learning because the activity designs related more to their daily life, thereby enhancing their sense of confidence and satisfaction. Conclusions include that UG effectively enhances student geometry estimation ability, geometry learning achievement, spatial ability, and understanding of geometric concepts.

In this study, we designed and developed an app called Ubiquitous-Physics (U-Physics) for mobile devices like tablet PC or smart phones to help students learn the principles behind a simple pendulum in Physics. The unique characteristic of U-Physics is the use of sensors on mobile devices to collect acceleration and velocity data during pendulum swings. The data collected are transformed to facilitate students’ understanding of the pendulum time period. U-Physics helped students understand the effects of pendulum mass, length, and angle in relation to its time period. In addition, U-Physics was equipped with an annotation function such as textual annotation to help students interpret and understand the concepts and phenomena of the simple pendulum. U-Physics also generated graphs automatically to demonstrate the time period during which the pendulum was swinging. Results showed a significant positive correlation between interpreting graphs and applying formula. This finding indicated that the ability to interpret graphs has an important role in scientific learning. Therefore, we strongly recommend that physics teachers use graphs to enrich students’ information content and understanding and negative correlation between pair coherence and interpreting graphs. It may be that most of the participants (vocational high school students) have limited skill or confidence in physics problem solving; so, they often seek help from teachers or their high-achieving peers. In addition, the findings also indicated that U-Physics can enhance students’ achievement during a 3-week time period. We hope that this app can be globally used to learn physics in the future.

In this study, Ubiquitous-Physics was designed and proposed for facilitating students to learn simple pendulum concepts. U-Physics can facilitate collecting experimental data and drawing the corresponding graphs during the experiment, whereby students can focus on how to interpret graphs and solve problems through applying formulas. The participants were second grade female vocational high school students who are fewer interests in physics, while hopefully using U-Physics in the physical experiment can motivate their interests and help their learning in physics. The findings showed that significant correlations existed among hypothesis-making, interpreting graphs, applying formulas, conclusion-making, conceptual understanding, and post-test. After an in-depth investigation, we found that interpreting graphs and conceptual understanding were the two most important factors to affect learning achievement. Additionally, students perceived that U-Physics was beneficial to their physics learning.

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between learning behaviors (hypothesis-making, interpreting graphs, applying formula, conclusion-making and conceptual understanding) and learning achievement on vocational students who use our developed Ubiquitous-Physics (U-Physics) to learn simple pendulum in the experiment. Thus, this study conducted an experiment with participating second grade female vocational high school students who are less interests in physics, while hopefully using U-Physics in the physical experiment can motivate their interests and help their learning in physics. Yet, this study explored participants' perceptions towards the U-Physics. The results showed that there were significant correlation among hypothesis-making, interpreting graphs, applying formula, conclusion-making, conceptual understanding, and post-test. We also found that interpreting graphs and conceptual understanding were the two most important factors to affect learning achievement. In addition, students perceived that U-Physics was easy to use and useful for learning physics. Therefore, this study is strongly suggested experimental procedure should ask learners to interpret physics phenomena by graphs. Besides that, Teachers and researchers also should design physics learning activities to improve students' multiple representation skills supported by U-Physics system and utilize advanced features of mobile devices such as acceleration sensors, gyroscope, light sensors and GPS for learning physics.