Teacher Perception of OLabs Pedagogy

Abstract

Online Labs (OLabs) is a major Digital India initiative with over 135 online experiments mapped to high school curriculum. For each experiment, OLabs provides background on the theory, animations, simulations, videos, viva voce questions, and links to additional resources. OLabs has been translated to multiple Indian languages. As part of scaling OLabs to the nation, over 16,000 teachers in all Indian states have been trained across India. The current manuscript presents a survey of 112 teachers who attended OLabs workshops and uses OLabs in the classroom. The study’s purpose is to understand the effective implementation of teacher training, to understand how OLabs is used in school laboratory experiments, and to understand how OLabs can supplement or replace real laboratories. A majority of teachers agree that repetition of OLabs experiments helps improve understanding of the concepts. There exists a strong correlation between the teachers’ perception of the quality of videos and animations and the teachers’ attitude on the usefulness of virtual laboratory software. Whether or not teachers feel that virtual laboratory software is useful to students is strongly associated with whether or not teachers feel that software is sufficiently fast and responsive. With regard to the workshops, teachers place high emphasis on the importance of establishing a clear agenda during the workshops. Finally, almost all teachers agree that OLabs can be an effective supplement to real laboratories.