Abstract:

Student attendance at lectures at technical universities in our country is not compulsory, but is recommended. Not all students regularly attend lectures. The present paper offers an analysis and comparison of the results of studying two groups in the first year of study at a technical university (first semester 2023/24, subject - Introduction to Physics). The experimental group consists of students who attended lectures regularly and actively, and the control group consists of students who attended lectures occasionally. This study aimed to compare students' conceptual comprehension. Confidence of students’ answers during pre-test and post-test was analysed and compared. We can declare, that the number of correct answers in the test increased at the end of the semester in both, the control and experimental groups, but more in the experimental group. Students' confidence has also increased, more in the experimental group. We also investigated the confidence of incorrect answers. The number of incorrect answers decreased at the end of the semester, but less in the control group. The problem is that many students in the control group consider their incorrect answers to be correct with high confidence.

During the lectures, to eliminate misconceptions of physical processes, an interactive form of teaching physics was used with the Video Analysis Method (VAM) - analysis of real physical experiments recorded in the form of a video. Lectures and presentations were made using video recordings of real demonstrations in combination with video analysis using the Tracker interactive program and active student discussion in conjunction with the Peer Instruction (PI) method: each concept question has the following general format – after a question, students were given time to think and then they record individual answers – it was 1st voting. Next students discussed their answers. After discussion, they record revised answers - 2nd voting. Followed teacher feedback and an explanation of correct and incorrect answers using VAM. Then followed 3rd voting. Evaluation of student responses was organized using the Slido live polling. It is necessary to point out, that the teacher never told the students which answer was correct. The students had to find the right answer on their own. According to an analysis from Slido pooling, the students' responses confirmed that the percentage of correct answers increased after the 3rd voting.

The Force concept inventory (FCI) pre-test and post-test at the beginning of the semester and at the end of the semester were used for comparison and analysis. The FCI test is a 30-item multiple choice test focusing on the core concepts of force and motion. Analysis of the results obtained using the Student t-test confirmed that there was no statistically significant difference between the groups at the beginning of the semester. At the end of the semester, there was an increase in knowledge in both the control and experimental groups. However, the comparison of the results of the control and experimental groups at the end of the semester using the Student t-test shows a statistically significant difference between the experimental and control groups.

Our results presented in this paper show that students' responsible and active approach to lectures using Video Analysis and Peer Instruction Methods leads to better results in conception and knowledge compared to students who prefer self-study and attend lectures only occasionally or infrequently.

Keywords:

STEM education, physics teaching and learning, FCI test, misconceptions, PI method