Effectiveness of virtual laboratories on developing expert thinking and decision-making skills among female school students in Palestine

Abstract

The virtual laboratory is considered one of the latest technologies in the field of education that aims to develop the educational skills of students such 100 hundred school students from a public all-girl primary school in east Gaza were divided into two groups to participate in a quasi-experimental study. Each group completed a particular pre- and post-tests for expert thinking and decision-making skills. The results showed that students in the experimental group were significantly higher than students in the control group in the total mean score of the expert thinking test (27.89 versus 12.47; p=0.001, η<sup>2</sup>=0.71). A comparison of the pre-post score for the expert thinking test showed a significant improvement in students’ performance (p=0.001). The post scores for the decision-making scale showed a significant difference between students in the control group and the experimental group (p=0.001). The total mean score of the decision-making scale in the experimental group in the post-scale (82.32±10.87) was significantly higher than the pre-scale score (70.85±9.80) (p=0.001). It could be concluded that using virtual laboratory and simulation applications had a positive impact on improving students’ scientific knowledge, scientific process, decision-making ability and developing expert thinking skills.