College Students Improvised Ideas during Physics Laboratory Activities

Abstract

This study aims at checking college student-teachers’ transferability ideas from physics laboratory activities to improvised materials. We employed undergraduate students from the University of Rwanda College of Education to carry it out during their laboratory experiments session. Since these students are future secondary teachers, we first observed them performing Ohms Law, Faraday law, Wheatstone bridge, and Compass magnet experiments. We followed them, asking them to compare how they could improvise from what they did at school whenever there were no conventional materials. We found that students face challenges in performing provided experiments even if the instructional protocols are provided and receive laboratory technician support. These students could also not imagine how they could improvise these experiments. These results were caused by the fact that they do not possess improvisation skills, and few experiments were provided to them. In this regard, the author recommends that college lecturers not only increase laboratory experiments but also instruct their students by reflecting on their future careers.