The experiment editor: supporting inquiry-based learning with virtual labs

Inquiry-based learning is a pedagogical approach where students are motivated to pose their own questions when facing problems or scenarios. In physics learning, students are turned into scientists who carry out experiments, collect and analyze data, formulate and evaluate hypotheses, and so on. Lab...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Galán, Daniel, Heradio Gil, Rubén, Torre Cubillo, Luis de la, Dormido Canto, Sebastián
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2017
País:España
Institución:Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia
Repositorio:e-spacio. Repositorio Institucional de la UNED
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:e-spacio.uned.es:20.500.14468/26984
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14468/26984
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:1203.17 Informática
Descripción
Sumario:Inquiry-based learning is a pedagogical approach where students are motivated to pose their own questions when facing problems or scenarios. In physics learning, students are turned into scientists who carry out experiments, collect and analyze data, formulate and evaluate hypotheses, and so on. Lab experimentation is essential for inquiry-based learning, yet there is a drawback with traditional hands-on labs in the high costs associated with equipment, space, and maintenance staff. Virtual laboratories are helpful to reduce these costs. This paper enriches the virtual lab ecosystem by providing an integrated environment to automate experimentation tasks. In particular, our environment supports: (i) scripting and running experiments on virtual labs, and (ii) collecting and analyzing data from the experiments. The current implementation of our environment supports virtual labs created with the authoring tool Easy Java/Javascript Simulations. Since there are public repositories with hundreds of freely available labs created with this tool, the potential applicability to our environment is considerable.