Abstract
Mobile devices (smartphones or tablets) as experimental tools (METs) offer inspiring possibilities for science education, but until now, there has been little research studying this approach. Previous research indicated that METs have positive effects on students’ interest and curiosity. The present investigation focuses on potential cognitive effects of METs using video analyses on tablets to investigate pendulum movements and an instruction that has been used before to study effects of smartphones’ acceleration sensors. In a quasi-experimental repeated-measurement design, a treatment group uses METs (TG, NTG = 23) and a control group works with traditional experimental tools (CG, NCG = 28) to study the effects on interest, curiosity, and learning achievement. Moreover, various control variables were taken into account. We suppose that pupils in the TG have a lower extraneous cognitive load and higher learning achievement than those in the CG working with traditional experimental tools. ANCOVAs showed significantly higher levels of learning achievement in the TG (medium effect size). No differences were found for interest, curiosity, or cognitive load. This might be due to a smaller material context provided by tablets, in comparison to smartphones, as more pupils possess and are familiar with smartphones than with tablets. Another reason for the unchanged interest might be the composition of the sample: While previous research showed that especially originally less-interested students profited most from using METs, the current sample contained only specialized courses, i.e., students with a high original interest, for whom the effect of METs on their interest is presumably smaller.
Highlights
Nowadays, most pupils cannot imagine life without mobile devices as smartphones or tablets
We conducted a quasi-experimental treatment group–control group study, which took place during pupils’ regular physics lessons: Before the intervention, all pupils were tested for 45 min
The treatment groups’ introduction took place before the pre-test so that any learning differences caused by the introduction can be controlled by using the pretest as control variable
Summary
Most pupils cannot imagine life without mobile devices as smartphones or tablets. These devices create new possibilities for teaching and learning, especially in science education. They cannot only be used for communication or browsing the internet and as mobile pocket-labs, as they come with a multitude of built-in sensors. Despite the seeming “boom” of METs due to favorable theoretical and practical arguments, there have been few empirical studies regarding the learning effects of METs in science education in high school (see, e.g., Kuhn and Vogt 2015; Mazzella and Testa 2016; Becker et al 2018a; Hochberg et al 2018; for reviews, see, e.g., Bano et al 2018; Oliveira et al 2019)
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