Reconstruction High School Student's Conception about Parallel Electrical Circuit Concept Using Virtual Conceptual Change Laboratory (VCCLab)

Abstract

In this research, the study of the effectiveness of virtual conceptual change laboratory (VCCLab) on reconstruction high school students' conception about parallel electrical circuit concept has been done. Misconception about parallel electrical circuit concept which was addressed in this study is the addition of identical branches to a parallel circuit will change the amount of electric current flowing in each existing branch circuit because the potential difference and resistance value in these parallel branches do not change. The VCCLab used in this research was the five-stage of lab activities oriented towards conceptual change developed by researchers. To support VCCLab activities, student worksheets and the necessary laboratory equipment have been developed. A pre-experiment method with one group pretest-posttest design was used. The research subjects were 36 high school students consisting of 18 female students and 18 male students chosen by purposive sampling. Data were collected by conceptual test in the four-tier test format concerning parallel electrical circuit concept, which has previously been validated and tested for its reliability. The results of this study show that the number of male students, whose misconceptions can be remediated is 83,3%, while the number of female students, whose misconceptions 88,9%. These results indicate that: first, the use of VCCLab has a high effectiveness in remediating high school students' misconceptions about the concept of parallel electrical circuit; second, there is no gender bias from the use of VCCLab in the process of remediating physics misconceptions.