Electricity : a multimedia software package

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the relationship between teaching electricity and using the computer based approach. The introduction of multimedia in education stimulates the students' imagination and helps them to conceptualize abstract concepts. Electricity is a very abstract topic in physics and many students build up various misconceptions because terms tend to be used wrongly in everyday language. This research project produced a software package consisting of an interactive game designed to enhance students' effective learning of the topic and to prepare them for their SEC examination. This package provides an insight of electricity from a practical point of view. With the help of various animations and its interactivity it will also serve to reduce the misconceptions which surround electricity. The CD consists of two main sections. The first section is a game in which users go around the various rooms in the house and answer questions about electricity. The second section consists of a glossary: an interactive book having more than seventy entries on electrical terms. By illustrating abstract concepts through animations and comic figures, the package helps students to concretise these concepts. An informal evaluation of the package was carried out with a small group of students and teachers. Their overall opinion about the software was it was a valid contribution to the teaching and learning of physics. An analysis of this evaluation also highlighted the improvements, that could be included in future revisions of the software package.