Chapter 8: A Comprehensive Literature Review on Students’ Conceptual Understandings Enhanced Through Technology Instruction

Today, increasing numbers of children gain early access to computers in their homes, and computers have become an ordinary feature of most classrooms, with the ratio of computers to children in the U.S. increasing to one computer to every four children over the last two decades (Calvert, Rideout, Woolard, Barr, & Strouse, 2005; Russell, Bebell, O’Dwyer, & O’Connor, 2003). Although some researchers continue to doubt the effectiveness of computer-based instruction (Carlsen & Andre, 1992; Clark, 1994; Cross & Cross, 2004; Olson & Clough, 2001; Yaman, Nerdel, & Bayrhuber, 2008), an increasing number of studies provides more and more convincing evidence of the effectiveness of using computer technology to facilitate instruction and learning across a variety of school subjects, including science (e.g., Bayraktar, 2002; Clements, 2002; Hobson, Trundle, & Saçkes, 2010; Kulik & Kulik, 1991; McKenney & Voogt, 2009; Mioduser, Tur-Kaspa, & Leitner, 2000; Trundle & Bell, 2010). For example, the results of an early meta-analytic study concluded that computer-based instruction was more effective than, or at least as effective as, traditional instruction (Kulik, Kulik, & Cohen, 1980). Fletcher-Flinn and Gravatt’s meta-analytic study (1995) concluded that computer simulations tended to increase students’ achievement. Another meta-analysis of 42 studies reported that computer simulations are more effective than traditional instruction, with a mean effect size of 0.39 (Bayraktar, 2002). A meta-analysis of 79 studies of science simulation software for grades six through 12 reported similar results, with a majority of the reviewed studies reporting learning gains in the treatments that used simulations (Scalise, Timms, Moorjani, Clark, Holtermann, & Irvin, 2011). A more recent critical review of 61 empirical studies on the impact of computer simulations on science teaching and learning also reported positive impacts of the use of simulations for a majority of studies reviewed (49 of 61, or 80%; Smetana & Bell, 2012).