The Effectiveness Comparison of Virtual Laboratory and Physical Laboratory in Nurturing Students’ Attitude towards Chemistry

摘要

The aim of the research is to compare the effectiveness of Virtual Laboratory and Physical Laboratory in students’ attitude towards chemistry. The students’ attitude towards chemistry is compared by gender and the interaction effect between groups and gender was studied. The instrument used in this research is Attitude Towards Chemistry Lessons Scale (ATCLS). A quasi-experimental research design with nonequivalent control group pre-survey and post-survey was used. The participants of this research are Malaysian? upper secondary four ?science stream students. This research involved a total of 147 students, which are 64 male students and 83 female students. The two-way ANCOVA analysis showed that the effectiveness of group on the post ATCLS mean score was not significant. It concluded that the level of students’ ? attitude towards chemistry is same when experiment is done in VLab or PLab. The effectiveness of attitude towards chemistry on gender was not significant. The analysis also showed that the interaction effect between group and gender in ATCLS ? is not significant. This means the group’s influence on the mean score of ATCLS is not caused by the gender and the gender influence on the mean score of ATCLS is not caused by groups.