Abstract:

In this paper, we analyzed the impact of doing simple hands-on activities during physics lectures involving two introductory physics courses. Performance between students who were involved in the activity was compared with those who were not. Both groups took the same final exam with questions from the associated course. The problems were common to all, only one group had the opportunity to test it out using low-tech hands-on experiments. In terms of background and major, the student population who used this new tool was the same as those who did not. It was a mixture of physics and engineering majors. Although the same material was covered in both sections, and both groups attended the same lab class, students with low-tech hands-on experience were benefited more from it. There was a significant difference between the two groups in terms of the grades on the related problems. While raising questions about the effectiveness of traditional labs, this exercise proved, going back to Low-Tech, can help students think outside the box and better understand the concepts.

Keywords:

Hands-on experiments, physics pedagogy, project-based learning.