Students’ Motivation of Science Learning in Integrated Computer-based Laboratory Environment

Abstract

Absolutely, teaching of science by the way of memorizing of scientific facts, what science is, and how to do science is not work for motivating student into meaningful learning in science and understanding science in the way it is. Currently, computerized technological tool is so commonplace in the practice and advancement of science education community in order to engaging student learning in science by doing, not memorizing it. The tool has been proved its potential support in instructional sciences in science classroom. According to the potential abovementioned, this paper reported an effect of integrated computer-based laboratory environment, a harmonization of hands-on computer-based experiment and interactive computer simulation, on 123 of 11th grade students in three groups: 49 science-major students; 37 technology-focused non-science students; and 37 language-focused non-science students. On a purpose, the study has implemented a series of open-inquiry science learning activity in a unit of science of fluid such as capillary action, surface tension and contact angle phenomena. The Science Motivation Questionnaire II (Glynn et al., 2011), was used to investigate their motivation toward learning of science. Results show the learning environment impacted a movement of the students’ motivation toward learning of science. This implied that the teaching of science by Integrated Computer-based Laboratory Environment could be used to motivate potentially student learning in science both science and non-science major in secondary education.