How does student skill on interpreting circular motion situation change in an online physics classroom?

Abstract

High-school physics has become challenging to many teachers after their classrooms were moved to an online platform. How to teach effectively is concerned when students struggled to grasp the concept learning in the online classroom. Circular motion is the topic that the students could not understand the content well while concentrating on the screen. This work aims to investigate the achievement of using peer instruction to teach the first three steps of circular motion problem solving strategy. These are (i) identify the path of motion and its radius, (ii) draw a free-body diagram, and (iii) find the force components acting on the object. The approach was implemented to an online physics classroom with 12 high-school students. The result was analyzed from pre- and post-test data, and student practices during the teaching. The finding showed that there were more students who could interpret the circular motion situation correctly than at the beginning of the class. The path of motion and the forces acting on the object could be identified, and some students could find the centripetal force correctly. Moreover, their interaction in the class related to the of their understanding of the topic.