Hybrid Learning Environment: The Effectiveness of Simultaneous Use of Real And Virtual Experiments on Students' Scientific Reasoning Skill

Understanding science, and having high-level thinking skills are essential skills for living in today's world. To improve such skills, science education standards around the world, and curricula of different countries, including Canada, Australia, and England, as well as the national curriculum of Iran, suggest inquiry-based learning.; but in the past 20 years, digital technologies such as virtual experiments have been used to improve, and even in some cases replace real experiments. Also, a combination of real and virtual experiments enhances conceptual understanding more than single experimental formats, however, this is a question that has remained unanswered so far and that is whether the combination of virtual and real laboratories will also affect other cognitive processes of students such as thinking and reasoning or not. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to clarify the role of using real, virtual, and combined real and virtual experiments on improving systemic thinking with the subject of electric currents.
In this study, 80 male high school students in Ahvaz who were studying in the eleventh grade of in the academic year 1402-1401 were selected by available sampling. The level of learning of the participants from the subject of electric currents, as well as their systemic thinking skills, were measured using the standard tool "Determining and Interpreting Resistive Electric Circuit Concepts Test" or DIRECT. First, the students' scores in the pre-test and post-test of DIRECT were collected. Some answers were for the multiple-choice section and some answers were for the descriptive section. The correct answer to the multiple-choice section had a score of one, and the wrong answer had a score of zero for the student. To eliminate the effect of pre-test (memory retention of response), one-way analysis of covariance was used. In this method, the effect of pre-test scores on post-test scores is first predicted by simple linear regression and then removed; after removing the effect of pre-test, the difference between post-test mean of groups is examined by analysis of variance.
The findings showed that the real learning environment and conducting inquiry in real laboratories had the most impact on students' real-world knowledge. Real-world knowledge is the knowledge of the elements that learners need to become familiar with a scientific field or solve problems related to it. This knowledge is the same as the knowledge of scientific terms and expressions, along with places and events in the real world. According to this definition and considering the characteristics of the real learning environment, the greater impact of real experiments on the better growth of students' real-world knowledge is justifiable. The low impact of the virtual learning environment on students' real-world knowledge and their procedural knowledge can also be understood from this perspective, because the real and sensory connection of students with the phenomenon in question in virtual learning environments will cause less impact of this environment on students' real-world knowledge. The superiority of the virtual learning environment over the real one can be well seen in the greater effectiveness of virtual experiments on their conceptual knowledge in this study. According to the findings, the virtual learning environment had the highest effect size (i.e. 0.61) on the growth of students' conceptual knowledge. In response to this research question that whether the combined learning environment could help improve students' physics knowledge, it should be said that combining real and virtual experiments in class and creating a combined learning environment could have a better effect and improve all types of knowledge well. The effectiveness of the combined learning environment showed that this environment, due to taking advantage of the features of both the real and virtual worlds simultaneously, could affect both real and procedural knowledge, as well as conceptual knowledge, and show its superiority over single learning environments, real or virtual. The findings showed that none of the learning environments used in the study, which were all based on scientific inquiry, could improve students' causal coherence skills. The lowest effect size in this study was related to the effectiveness of real (effect size 0.33), virtual (effect size 0.41) and combined (effect size 0.42) environments on causal coherence dimension in systemic thinking skill. Causal coherence is creating an accurate relationship and strong connection between reasoning components, and explaining phenomena using evidence, while using scientific and reality-based reasons.
The added value of this research is that it recommends the use of learning environments to improve knowledge in a classified way, so that according to the findings of this study, it can be concluded that for improving students' real-world and procedural knowledge, it is appropriate to use real learning environments and for improving conceptual knowledge, it is better to use a combination of real and virtual experiments. In the meantime, the continuous and creative use of classroom space for observation and real experimentation and the effective use of interactive simulations and virtual laboratories to show hidden aspects of many phenomena along with the real environment will help improve all types of knowledge in physics. The combined use of real and virtual learning environments, if accompanied by a suitable curriculum, will turn the class into the most equipped scientific laboratory for conducting inquiry. Inquiry without its complementary activity, namely modeling, cannot help students achieve high levels of thinking, and in this regard, the role of teachers as facilitators can be prominent and constructive. It is suggested that inquiry in class be performed by teachers with a model-based approach using a combination of real and virtual experiments. More attention of teacher training centers to science education standards that are stated in the national curriculum, and including inquiry and modeling activities in it for teacher training, reviewing the content of curriculum based on real and virtual learning environments based on inquiry, holding training courses for better use of teachers and students from virtual laboratories, reviewing the science curriculum of the second high school (physics, chemistry, biology) with a focus on scientific modeling, equipping classes, workshops, and laboratories with new technologies, can all provide the ground for implementing inquiry-based teaching methods and their effectiveness.