Improving Grade 11 Students’ Understanding on the Law of Inertia with PhET Simulations

Abstract

The action research aimed to assess the challenges experience by in learning the First Law of Motion and whether integrating Physics Education Technology (PhET) Interactive Simulations improves students’ conceptual understanding of the Law of Inertia. This aimed to alleviate students’ challenges in learning Law of Inertia due to lack of real-life examples and classroom demonstration of its concepts. The participants were 43 Grade 11 students from General Academic Strand sections, selected through purposive sampling from the entire population. To collect data, an in-depth interview and the Undesrtanding Newton’s First Law of Motion Test were administered to measure the students’ conceptual understanding of the Law of Inertia. Based on the Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA), the results showed that the students have difficulty in understanding Law of Inertia due to the lack of real-life examples and engagement in learning. Moreover, the findings showed that, although the students’ test performance was generally poor, both the traditional and PhET-integrated approaches were effective and had the potential to improve conceptual understanding among the students. Furthermore, the results indicated that students' conceptual understanding improved significantly more with the use of PhET Interactive Simulations compared to the traditional approach. The researchers recommend the utilization and integration of PhET Interactive Simulations in the classroom to enhance students learning by providing concrete simulations and real-life applications.