Background: The adoption of virtual laboratories (VLs) has experienced a significant surge, catalysed by the global changes in the educational landscape, notably influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally supplementary to traditional in-person laboratory experiments, VLs swiftly transitioned into a primary source of hands-on laboratory…

The article introduces a low-cost Arduino sensor into the Young's modulus determination laboratory for physics university students. A stainless steel ruler is used as a cantilever beam. Its free end attached a mass is slightly bent and released to make it oscillate as a simple harmonic motion. The Arduino sensor detects the moving mass's frequency…

A major obstacle that teachers face when they begin their spectroscopy lessons is the lack of a spectrophotometer, mostly due to its relatively high cost. In the present study, the construction of a low-cost do-it-yourself type of instrument is reported. Its construction, as a part of a problem-based scenario, would also help students to enhance…

Online video experiments are a promising educational technology tool for science laboratory classes. In order to find optimal instructional designs and scenarios for using online video experiments, we need to study learners' experiences. This work describes implementation of an online interactive video experiment at the undergraduate introductory…

The term "histology" was coined a little over 200 years ago and the subject has always relied on microscopy as its defining technology. Microscopy was and still is an essential approach for the description of cellular components and their arrangements in living organisms. For more than a century and a half, histology or microanatomy has…

Encouraging student engagement is a key aim in any educational setting, and allowing students the freedom to pursue their own methods of solving problems through independent experimentation has been shown to markedly improve this. In many contexts, however, allowing students this flexibility in their learning is hampered by constraints of the…

The scope of this preliminary study revolves around investigating the effectiveness of experiential learning in upper-year science laboratory courses in a post-pandemic era. In this study we have explored two key questions: 1. Can experiential learning facilitate independent inquiry in an upper-year undergraduate laboratory in a post-pandemic era?…

The advantage of VLs lies in their capacity for simulating real-world lab experiences within a fully immersive digital environment, yet the uptake in rural schools in developing countries remains low. To understand this paradox, this study explores the perceptions of seven secondary school science teachers in a rural district in South Africa.…

During the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown, both schools and universities faced significant challenges in moving teaching from an in-situ setting to a remote one, this included laboratory experiments. This paper presents an experiment developed to use a phone's in built pressure sensor, common to most smart phones. By using this sensor…

Development and evaluation of a teaching-learning activity in 4th year Forensic Physics course of Degree in Criminology was based on different combinations of a virtual laboratory and a research laboratory as teaching spaces. Students explored in detail the components and functioning of an electron microscope using both an online suite of…

Access to laboratory facilities and associated instrumentation represents a major barrier to learning in physical science education, due to constraints introduced by limited time and financial resources, cost of acquisition, and health and safety requirements. Virtualized laboratories offer some mitigation of these problems but may also introduce…

Eleven different laboratory experiments were designed and executed throughout a semester to provide a meaningful research experience for 23 undergraduate biochemistry majors at UTSA. The topic of the semester was based on the idea of exploring new aspects to enhance our understanding of how the human body uses cytochrome P450 enzymes to metabolize…

The switch to online learning required a creative solution to allow for the experiential learning outcomes of the program to be satisfied when access to physical spaces and equipment was restricted. This paper describes a collaborative process between technical and support staff as well as research and teaching faculty that led to the creation of…

Virtual reality (VR) provides significant opportunities for students to experience immersive education. In VR, students can travel to the international space station, or go through a science experiment at home. However, the current tactile feedback provided by these systems do not feel real. Controllers do not provide the same tactile feedback…

A low-cost simple one-dimensional spring-mass system was constructed to investigate damped oscillations. The suspended mass in the system can move freely inside a cylinder containing a fluid. It provides an in-depth experience for demonstrating various concepts under oscillations. It can be used to probe the magnitude of damping forces in liquids…