The peculiarities of design and development of software in the context of digitalization of natural science education

Abstract

The goal of this research is to develop the theory and practice of synergetic design and development of software for digital physical laboratories to increase the level of compliance of behavior of the object with reality and reduce the level of student’s immersion into the virtual environment. One of the tasks for achieving this goal lies in using a synergetic aspect in design and development of software for implementation in the process of teaching natural science disciplines, which allows consolidating virtuality and reality of the surrounding world. In the course of this research, the authors substantiate the synergetic aspect in the development of software for digital laboratories in the context of taking higher school physics. The authors build the main scenario and functional scheme of the software product, which are realized on the high-level C++ language using OpenGL libraries. Software implementation of the digital physical laboratory required preparation of videos with a series of physical experiments, determination of the course of execution of laboratory task, and examples of “returning” from virtual reality.  The developed use case diagram of the actors allowed determining the behavioral pattern of the parties to the development, as well as using the digital physical laboratory in the educational process. Synergetic aspect and possibility of its implementation were tested on the example of digital laboratory work in the context of studying the pendulum motion and fall of bodies. The promising development trend is the design and implementation of software products for determination of synergistic effects in studying the sections of optics and thermodynamics.