10-14 July 2016
Africa/Johannesburg timezone
Paper Submission is Open!! Registration for CCP2016 Conference will be open at the registration desk @ St. George's Hotel reception area on Sunday 10 July / Welcome Dinner at 18:30 SAST.

Learning problem-solving skills in a distance education physics course

11 Jul 2016, 15:10
20m
Oral Presentation Physics Education Parallel Track B

Speaker

Prof. Gaotsiwe Joel Rampho (University of South Africa)

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Instructional material for computational physics courses can be presented through face-to-face, online or just print technology. The effectiveness of each of these presentation modes in learning computational physics need to be investigated. In this paper we present the results of a study on the effectiveness of combinations of delivery modes of distance education in teaching problem-solving skills in a first-level distance education physics course. A problem-solving instruction with explicit teaching of a problem-solving strategy and worked-out examples was implemented in the course. The course was presented through correspondence, online using a learning management system, as well as two face-to-face discussion classes. The study used the ex post facto research design with stratified sampling to investigate the effect of the learning of the problem-solving strategy on the problem-solving performance. The number of problems attempted and the mean frequency of using strategy in problem solving in the three strata were compared. Inferential statistics were used to compare the means for the three strata. The finding of the study indicated that the blended-learning approach had no statistically significant effect in the learning of problem-solving skills in a distance education module.

Primary author

Prof. Gaotsiwe Joel Rampho (University of South Africa)

Co-author

Prof. Mmankoko Ramorola (University of South Africa)

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