The goal of this investigation was to elucidate undergraduate chemistry students' response to the SimuLab computer-based learning environment, which simulates a 20 hours laboratory assignment. The SimuLab is a cognitive tool designed to help students to acquire experimental and analytical skills on the basis of a classical qualitative and quantitative analysis scheme and to develop their ability to interpret experimental results. Consistent with the intentions behind the design, students seemed to acknowledge the learning potential of the simulation program. They found it motivating and creating attention towards the practical application of declarative knowledge. We also found SimuLab to support students in the accomplishment of cognitive tasks and to enhance their skills in the context of the investigation.
Learning new concepts and ideas typically requires that the learners activate and bring to bear some prior knowledge for interpreting and assimilating the new ideas. This prior knowledge can be conceived of as some coherent body of relevant knowledge that can be referred to as a schema. Once the new ideas and concepts are assimilated within an existing schema, then the schema can be used to generate new inferences, expectations and explanations. Learning failures and misunderstanding occur, typically, either when the cues in the new materials activate no relevant prior schema, or when the cues activate incomplete and under-developed prior schema. Misconceptions, so prevalent for science concepts, are a special type of learning failures. It is a unique case in which an inappropriate schema is activated for assimilation and generation. This chapter provides a theoretical account for this particular type of learning failures, using natural selection as an example. Some preliminary findings from a pilot study are also presented.
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