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d as laboratory experience was determined when compared with hands-on experience.

Research Question

The main purpose of this experimental research project is to evaluate the effectiveness of the computer simulations in physics instruction and learning. This study, therefore, required to address the following research question:

What is the effect of using computer simulations as laboratory experimentation compared to using hands-on experimentation on students’ conceptual understanding of projectile motion in the physics classroom?

Studies conducted on comparing computer simulated laboratory experimentation with hands-on laboratory experimentation revealed that students that are instructed in simulated laboratory environment performed higher than students that are instructed in hands-on experiment environment on junior high school students’ understanding of volume displacement (Choi and Gennaro, 1987), and for this study, I expect that students exposed to the simulated laboratory experimentation would score significantly higher on the conceptual understanding of projectile motion measures than students exposed to hands-on laboratory experimentation.

Significance and Need of the Study

Student’s specific conceptual and reasoning difficulties have clearly characterized in projectile motion and, with the appropriate use of simulated laboratory environment, physics teaching and learning becomes more interactive, inquiry, collaborative, near fun and engaging. So, examining students understanding of this topic with a previously administered misconception test will assess effectiveness of using simulations.

A long this time, I have stated about the contributions of the use of computer simulations to support the students’ science learning in classrooms; however, there should be some limitations during processing in terms of computer usability skills of both teachers and students and computer numbers for each student. I would try to eliminate these limitations during sample selection.

As a result, my justification for investigating this study is that the increasingly widespread availability of computers in high schools makes them an attractive alternative for instruction; and also, the widespread availability of Internet technology increases the use of computer simulations in physics instructions. There are so many free, useful simulations on the Internet and teachers can easily get access to the free instructional simulation websites. However, if we consider laboratory applications in Turkey, for doing a hands-on experiment, it is hard to find all necessary materials in the school laboratory. Moreover, think that you find the all necessary materials for one experiment, number of materials commonly inadequate for applying group activities. Then, I believe, using computer simulations for laboratory science instruction will provide some advantages such as; safety, cost-efficiency, minimization of flexible, rapid, and dynamic data displays to teaching and learning. Moreover, this research study can useful and helpful not only for teachers and researchers, but also for simulation developers in terms of describing the relationship between science and technology and the effective use of them together.

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW

The research finding