Evaluating the Efficiency of Virtual Laboratory Simulations in

Enhancing High School Students' Learning

Chapter I

Introduction

Many people say that education is the only thing that we can bring regardless of our
status. Be it rich, poor, or middle class, education is a big factor in being successful in life. A
diploma is the greatest treasure that we, the lifelong learners, will carry until the end of
time.

Virtual laboratories can efficiently provide the knowledge gained from traditional
laboratories, lessening the hassle and hazards to the students. According to Prasetya et al.
(2023), a study about improving the cognitive aspect of the students showed a significant
increase in learning from 52.04 to 82.36. Virtual laboratories can also help to lessen the time
of an experiment, since in traditional laboratories, all of the equipment, time, and effort will
exhaust them, thus making their learning a total chaos. The only downside of the virtual
laboratory to the traditional one is that you cannot experience how science can change your
views about it.

As you know, the sudden increase in heat in our country has heavily affected the
learners. The Department of Education decided to cancel classes so that the students could
recover from the high heat index. However, the cancellation of the classes will disrupt their
learning, especially when the calendar date of the school year is being renewed. According to
DepEd, on the 4th of April 2024, Parents across the country reached out to the teachers to
suspend face-to-face classes because of the extreme weather so in return, DepEd announced
Department Order 037 that provides guidelines on the cancellation of classes in the event of
natural disasters. They also encourage the teachers to implement asynchronous courses so
that the learners would still pass their subject and finish their requirements.
 Since extreme weather can compromise the well-being of both teachers and students,
face-to-face classes were suspended to ensure everyone's safety; thus, activities such as
experiments were also cancelled.

The popularity of virtual laboratories skyrocketed indefinetly, especially when covid-19

hit the country way back 2022 that closes many schools and universities. Even so, these
simulation gave opportunities to the students to visualize the experiments and still learn
regardless of circumstances, it has proven and tested that these virtual laboratory can give as
much as learning as the traditional laboratory according to (View of Effectiveness of Virtual
Laboratories in Teaching and Learning Biology: A Review of Literature, n.d.) virtual
laboratories improve the students’ motivation, self-efficacy and attitudes when doing an
experiments.

Sadly these simulations have their own flaws, such as the lack of materials, (e.g.
computers, laptops, smartphones etc.) slow internet connection and students who are not
good using these new technologies. Also it can hinder the teachers because they are limited
in terms of teaching and the main reason of it is that they cannot instruct properly their
students while doing the given experiments.

This study aims to determine the effectiveness of virtual laboratory simulations among
the students of Science, Technology and Engineering (STE) in Bartolome Sangalang National
High School (BSNHS).

Statement of the Problem

This study will examine the effectiveness of virtual laboratory simulation among the
(STE) Science, Technology and Engineering students of the Bartolome Sangalang National
High School.

Specifically, it seeks to examine the following:

1. Does utilizing virtual science laboratory as an alternative to physical laboratories an

effective tool in terms of:
1.1. Assessing students' performance.

1.2. Learning efficiency?

2. What are the positive and negative effects of using virtual science laboratory as a learning
tool?

3. What are the ways to improve the utilization of virtual science laboratories in high school
learning?

Hypothesis

1. Virtual experiments has a great increase of the students’ motivation, attitudes and
learning.
2. Virtual laboratory simulations is an easy access where students and teachers can learn
altogether.
3. Virtual experiments has no significant increase of the students’ motivation, attitudes
and learning.

Significance of the Study

The study with a title of “Evaluating the Efficiency of Virtual Laboratory Simulations in
Enhancing High School Students' Learning” will be beneficial to the following:

To the students – this study will be beneficial to the students in Bartolome

Sangalang National High School that is currently enrolled and for the future students of the
said institution. With this research, they will have a prior ideas on how effective and easy
access a virtual experiments can be and give them new ideas prior to these new
technologies.

To the faculty members – this research would help the BSNHS personnel of the
school where the study is conducted. The findings will improve take new approach to the
learning of the students in order to make a comfortably and easy access learning.
 To the educational administrators – the result of the study will open up new
innovations and ideas to the administrators of educational services in our country so that they
can make and implement new strategies to make students enjoy their studies.

To the future researchers - the study can be a source of ideas for upcoming
researchers, whereas they can use this to open up new studies to develop new research
topics that will improve the quality education in our country.

Scope and Delimitation

The aim of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of online/virtual experiments in

science, whereas it focuses to the STE students of Bartolome Sangalang National High School
(BSNHS).

This will mainly focus on the effectiveness of virtual laboratories as a new way of
learning during the asynchronous classes due to the extreme weathers experienced by the
students. This study limits its coverage to the STE students and it only covers the fourth
quarter in school year, 2023 – 2024.

Definition of Terms:

Virtual Laboratories

Traditional Laboratories

Cognitive

Science, Technology and Engineering course

 Chapter II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURES

This will tackle the related literatures that will give findings for the development of this
study and some related studies that serve as a basis of comparison of this study.

Learning

Learning is the act of acquiring skills and talents through developing knowledge,
behavior, and ability, e.g., how to move, such as standing, walking, jumping, etc., and how
to think critically and efficiently discover new things. It is a never-ending process, and the key
to discovering ideas that will progress our society and make our lives easy and comfortable.
According to Hennig, Jay A et al.(2021), the changes on the brain improves the behaviour of
a person making them more mature, thus developing new set of skills and ability.

It is also important to teenagers or high school students because this is the time to
further develop themselves and to experience new discoveries for their personal growth. You
can clearly determine that during this time, they will meet new people other than from their
families, thereby creating new relationships, talents, and emotions that can only be acquired
during their school life.

These set of skills must be focused to the 21st century skills that is solely needed for
the future since the society, along with its technology and people keep on advancing and
moving forward. We must be ready to use these so that it would help us to catch up and not
swallowed by these new informations.

Their cognitive, psychomotor and affective skills in learning will make them fully
prepared for their adult life, the further development of these are most likely to unlock their
potentials to be a properly developed adult with set of skills ready for the 21 st century. As
stated by Saguni, F., (2019), cognitive skills helps how children think, store information and
adapt to their environment, affective skills affect’s children’s creativity by providing an
opportunity to experiment with their feelings by building desires and hopes that is within a
child, and psychomotor skills are those specific to discreet physical functions, reflex actions
and interpretive movements.

VIRTUAL LEARNING

According to the study of Liu, D., et al. (2015), although virtual laboratories can be
used as a tool of learning, there are several issues that needs to be addressed such as the
weak reality experiences, weak attractiveness to the students, and 2d learning form of the
environment. Therefore, the study suggested to integrate the industry used assembly
technology into the virtual technology experiments, and introducing 3d gauges into the virtual
laboratories.

According to Sypsas, A., et al., (2020), the utilization of virtual laboratories in science
education has been explored extensively, albeit with varying degrees of integration with
inquiry-based learning methodologies. Notably, research has emphasized the potential of
virtual laboratories to provide learners with interactive and dynamic environments conducive
to inquiry-based exploration (Olympiou, Zacharia, & deJong, 2013). By allowing learners to
interact with multiple representations of objects, such as electrons, virtual laboratories
facilitate deeper comprehension of scientific phenomena (Paxinou et al., 2018).

According to the study of Udin, W. N., & Ramli, M. (2020), the V-labs gave positive
effects on student’s learning motivation. They found 78% of the students were interested to
learn about the genetic with V-lab. However, it was also mentioned that VLabs cannot
substitute traditional laboratory to improve students’ motivation as some students were
uninterested if cases or problems were presented in V-labs, and prefer to real life
representations.

TRADITIONAL LABORATORY

A study by Penn, M., & Ramnarain, U. (2019) highlights the significance of traditional
laboratory interventions in promoting student achievement and conceptual understanding in
chemistry education. It was mentioned that athough there are benefits, it is also important
that educators recognize the challenges associated with traditional laboratories and consider
integrating virtual laboratories to complement traditional approaches. By doing so, educators
can enhance students' engagement and understanding of chemistry concepts, ultimately
contributing to their academic success.