The teaching of first year undergraduate practical physics is currently faced with a difficult problem: the disparity in the level of practical physics many university entrant students have encountered prior to their arrival. Those with little practical physics experience enter the laboratory for the first time with a great deal of anxiety which represents a barrier to their learning. This anxiety is magnified when their fellow students some of whom have significant practical laboratory experience in their recent educational background deal easily with the same situation. At Durham University Interactive Screen Experiments (ISEs) have been used to familiarise students with laboratory equipment as part of an assessed pre-laboratory task for the first year physics laboratory after which they perform real experiments.
ISEs are photograph-based virtualizations of real experiments that allow students to interact with a representation of laboratory equipment prior to entering a laboratory class. These interactive sessions enable students to learn by performing experiments virtually in an environment where mistakes can be made safely and in private. This article contextualises the use of ISEs within their short but significant history. We first discuss their production and deployment and then focus on results from an evaluation of student perceptions of the use of ISEs. In contextualising the ISEs within the framework of the conversational model proposed by Laurillard their ability to help overcome barriers to learning will be compared with their capacity to deepen and enhance learning.
