A Study of the Impact of Virtual and Real Laboratories on Student's Learning and Retention of Physics and Laboratory

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of virtual as well as real laboratory on third-grade high-school female student's learning and retention of physics and laboratory course. The design of the study was a pre-experimental study with pre–test, post–test and follow-up. 30 third-grade high-school female students studying at the schools of Mashhad in the school year 2010-2011 were selected through convenient sampling and divided into two groups. The content validity coefficient was 0.68 while the reliability coefficient was calculated as 0.79 and 0.73 using the Cronbach's alpha and split-half, respectively. The analysis of covariance results showed that there existed no significant difference between the impact of virtual and real laboratories on the learning and retention of students. Also, the results of the analysis of variance with repeated measures showed that only significant factor was repetition.