Students’ perception about mechanical stress and what is most important for learning, during a practical task, using digital interactive lab description.

Abstract

This study investigated student’s knowledge about mechanical stress using material created by the authors of this text. The material was an interactive lab description which can be used as an aid for teachers when teaching solid mechanics. During the studies in upper secondary school in Sweden, students at the technology programme take a general introductory course in mechanics. The participants consisted of four classes from one school in Sweden. They answered a questionnaire before and after the solid mechanics task, 85 out of 107 students answered both questionnaires. A thematic analysis was applied on the material, resulting in 6 groups based on the students’ previous knowledge and how much they have learned. To find correlations between the different groups a Oneway Anova analysis with multiple comparison post hoc test was performed. No significant differences were found between groups and how the students rated importance of their preparation, lab description, interactive links, formula book, course book, the teacher or execution of the lab. Significant differences between groups and class, and between the class and the importance of the teacher were found. The teachers’ role was most important of all the categories in all classes while the lowest was the course book and the digital links. This study showed that the teacher was important for the students’ perception of solid mechanics during this lab and that the interactive lab description played less roll.