Effects of Virtual Laboratory Applications on Academic Achievement and Six-Month Retention of Learning in 4th Grade Science Education
Keywords:
science education, virtual laboratory, academic achievement, retention of learning, Earth's movements, simulation-based learningAbstract
This study investigated the effects of virtual laboratory applications on students' academic achievement and retention of learning in the Movements of the World unit taught in 4th grade Science education. The research adopted a pre-experimental, single-group pretest–posttest design. Instruction was delivered by the researcher using the EBA (Education Information Network) portal and the Mozaweb three-dimensional simulation platform. A 10-item achievement test developed by the researcher — encompassing all unit learning outcomes across three Bloom's Taxonomy cognitive levels (knowledge, comprehension, and application) and yielding a Cronbach's Alpha reliability coefficient of .727 — served as the primary measurement instrument. The study group comprised 65 fourth-grade students from three public primary schools in the Yakakent district of Samsun province, Turkey, selected through convenience sampling. The achievement test was administered as a pretest before instruction, as a posttest immediately after the unit, and — crucially — as a retention test six months later, a substantially longer retention interval than is typical in comparable studies (most of which employ two-to-four-week delays). Paired-samples t-tests and one-way ANOVA were conducted at α = .05. Findings indicated a statistically significant improvement from pretest (M = 6.41) to posttest (M = 8.25; t = −9.42, p < .001), demonstrating that virtual laboratory instruction enhanced academic achievement. Equally importantly, no significant decline was observed between posttest and six-month retention test scores (M = 8.11; t = 0.90, p = .37), indicating durable learning. These findings offer evidence — particularly valuable at the primary school level, where research on virtual laboratory applications is limited — that simulation-based science instruction can produce both immediate and long-lasting learning benefits.
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