The Importance of Virtual Labs in Information Technology Learning - Research Paper Example

6. Analysis and Results 6.1. Introduction This section presents the main results obtained when the research was carried out. The data presented here was obtained from an optional, anonymous survey which was administered online at the end of the semester. The survey was presented to 30 students of which 12 of them responded. This section presents the analysis of the questionnaire data collected. The analysis will help in answering the research questions of the study. The survey conducted provided both qualitative and quantitative data. 6.2. Analyze the data The objectives of the study include: 1. The importance of virtual labs in Information Technology learning. 2. The importance of virtual labs in assisting the students with their tutorials, assignments, and group work. 3. Usability and accessibility of the Virtual labs. 4. Future use of virtual labs in further studies. The survey was divided into several factors that helped us to measure and evaluate students’ satisfaction in using virtual labs in their studies. These factors included: 1. Assistance in Learning. 2. Accessibility and ease of use. 3. Virtual labs vs. Physical labs. 4. Overall satisfaction of Virtual labs usage The results obtained from the participants per every factor are summarized below. Factor 1: Assistance in Learning Most of the IT courses contain three important components which assist in delivering the concepts as well as gaining the objectives of the course. The three components include laboratory/tutorial work, assignments and group work. From the table 6.1 results, it is possible to deduce that more than 80% of the students use virtual labs to complete their assignments and tutorial work. Majority of the students strongly agree that virtual labs plays a vital role in helping them to easily complete their assignment on time, and 92% of the students still wish to use virtual labs in their future studies. Conversely, some of the students believe that they can complete their group work without necessarily using virtual labs. Most of students prefer to use physical labs when they are in the university, because they enhance their social life within the campus by allowing them to share their work together. Consequently, a number of them prefer to use virtual labs in their own time at the home and usually when the programs that need to complete their assignments are not available in their place. The above statement is affirmed by the following compliment made by one of the students: “Mainly during tutorials; virtual labs simplify things and allow me to do my work from home. I find that I prefer to socialise while I am at university; but having access to the virtual lab helps me do my work in my own time without cutting into my social life.” Table 6.1: Showing survey results on ‘Assistance in Learning’ Table 6.2 shows the mean scores rating for the six survey items relating to the assistance in learning obtained from the likert scale which was based on a 5 point scale , where 1=Strongly Disagree and 5=Strongly Agree. The students gave the system a 4 rating. Overall, the students found the Virtual labs system a valuable tool to help them in studying. Table 6.2: Showing the mean score rating of survey results on ‘Assistance in Learning’ Survey Statement Mean Virtual labs helped you to do your laboratory/tutorial work 3.83 You would like to use virtual labs for tutorial work in future courses 4.25 Virtual labs helped you to do your assignments 4.42 You would like to use virtual labs to do future assignments 4.58 Virtual labs helped you to do your group work 3.58 You would like to use virtual labs for future group work 3.92 Factor 2: Accessibility and Ease of Use One of the primary objectives of this project is to assess how easy the virtual labs can be accessed from anywhere and at any time. When virtual labs are easily accessible, students can complete their assignments and the course requirements that need special programs and software using any mobile device provided they have an internet connection. After using Virtual labs for 7 weeks during the semester, we asked the students the following survey question: “are Virtual labs available for you at any time and are they easy to use?” Figures 6.1 and 6.2 below shows that virtual labs are readily available and students do not experience difficulties in using them, as the percentage level of ‘strongly agree’ is very high as compared to others. Figure 6.1: Availability of the virtual labs Figure 6.2: Usability of the virtual labs Response to the survey question concerning the accessibility and usability of virtual labs can be divided into three broad categories as follows: 53% of the students responded positively and did not find any problem or barrier to access the virtual labs; 29 % of the students raised the issue of unreliable internet access; 18% of the students said that the use of IP addresses to connect with the Remote Virtual Machine lead to many problems (lost the IP, restart the server) as affirmed by the following statement: “Dynamically re-assigning IP addresses caused a lot of problems with people being unable to access their VM's online during the weekend to work on assignment 3. Otherwise they have been stable and easy to use.” Table 6.3 shows the results for the five survey items relating to the Accessibility and ease of use. On a 5 point scale, where 1 = Strongly Disagree, and 5 = Strongly Agree, students gave the system a 5 rating. The overall mean score for this factor was (M=5) which was the highest score among all the factors in the survey. Table 6.3: Accessibility and ease of use Survey Statement Mean The virtual lab was easy to use 4.58 The virtual lab was available to you when you needed it 4.42 It was easier to use the virtual lab than to reconfigure your home computer to do your university work 3.91 Virtual labs lived up to your expectations 4.27 Factor 3: Virtual labs vs. Physical labs Another important factor that can be used to measure the efficiency of Virtual labs is comparing them with tradition labs. As depicted on Figure 6.3, majority of the student gave neutral rating on using the Virtual labs rather than the Physical labs. Furthermore, 33% of student also had neutral view concerning the ease of using the Virtual Labs as compared to the Physical labs, and 8% of the students disagreed with this. Open ended comments received indicate that most of the students prefer to use both and cannot imagine the notion that virtual labs are replacing physical labs. This statement is affirmed by the following comment received from one of the students: “I would hope the term virtual lab does not mean students would no longer have labs to attend. I go to labs for the assistance of the tutor; not for the lab machine.” Figure 6.3: Comparison between Virtual labs and Physical labs Factor 4: Overall Satisfaction of Virtual Labs Usage This factor involved a combination of more than one item to assess the overall feedback and views concerning the Virtual labs. The items which were assessed are listed on Table 6.4 below. The results of this survey indicate that more than 83% of the students’ credit that Virtual labs will enhance the quality of studying IT courses. 50% of the students agreed that virtual labs are important in learning the IT courses, and 33% of the students had a neutral view concerning this issue. Moreover, when we asked students if they are comfortable with using the virtual labs in future and in other IT courses, majority of them agreed with this. Table 6.4: Overall Satisfaction about the Virtual lab usage Table 6.5 below is showing the mean scores results for the five survey items relating to overall satisfaction of the Virtual labs usage. On a 5 point scale, where 1=Strongly Disagree and 5=Strongly Agree, the students gave the system a 4 rating. Although, the sample was small, there was a clear indication that most of the students appreciated the fact that virtual labs are useful tools in IT learning. Table 6.5: Mean scores of overall satisfaction about the Virtual lab usage Survey Statement Mean The virtual labs enhance the quality of studying Information Technology 4.25 The virtual labs were important to your learning in the course 3.42 You would like to use virtual labs in the future 4.33 You would like to have virtual labs in other courses 4.17 You are highly satisfied with virtual labs 4.42 6.2.1. Open-ended Question: This section discusses the responses made to open-ended questions. There were five questions which included: (A) “When do you prefer to use virtual labs to do university work?”, (B) “When do you prefer to use on-campus labs to do university work?”, (C) “What are the strengths of using virtual labs?”, (D) “What are the weaknesses of using virtual labs?” , (E)” Any comments?”. Most of the answers to question (A) reveal that students usually prefer to use virtual labs when the programs needed to complete their assignment are not in their own computer, so they decide to use the remote labs rather reconfigure their computers. Other students said that they use Virtual labs when they want to test their program in other computers or to back-up their work. Students’ views on these questions were as follows: 1. “When testing on new machines or using different versions of software. The virtual machine allows lecturers to be sure of what software the students are using.” 2. “When I need to code or develop something I need to set up lots of things including application and other environmental conditions; but the virtual lab lets me do the assignments right away without any other annoying setting and installing. Setting and installing (maybe downloading application as well) are highly time consuming process and it also wastes time for the assignments.” 3. “When unable to install or get the required programs on my desktop PC at home” Responses to question (B) indicate that students usually use the on-campus labs during the tutorial or when they doing group work. Students' opinions about the question were as follows: 1. “Only to meet with groups; other than the virtual lab is good to use”. 2. “When doing group work with group members”. When we asked the students about the strengths of using Virtual labs (question (C)), we found that almost all students noted the usefulness of virtual labs in assisting them to handle their assignments without reconfiguring their computer, and they can access virtual labs software from anywhere anytime. Some students' opinions about this situation were as follows: 1. “Ability to access software from anywhere that I need for an assignment/uni work without the need to use MSDN to download software needed” 2. “Being able to co-ordinate work over multiple computers .Having easy access to necessary programs without reconfiguring your home PC.Easy to use; simple to navigate. Very good for doing assignments.” 3. “You can access software easily without needing to install it on your own machine or physically be on campus. They give you an extra opportunity to check that your assignments will work properly on a machine that it wasn't developed on.” Responses to question (D) were that you cannot use virtual labs without an internet connection and sometimes they are slow if your internet connection is poor. Moreover, some students raised the issue of remembering IP addresses to access the Virtual Machine. Some students’ comments about this question were as follows: 1. “Require internet access to connect; though almost everywhere as a wireless connection if on the go” 2. “If the server is restarted; IP addresses are lost; which results in a lot of downtime and can make assignment work difficult.” 3. “Remembering IP addresses...” 4. “Can be a little bit annoying if you're using a roaming wireless connection. Drops in and out.” Thus, in addition to giving Virtual lab positive evaluation, student also told us that Virtual lab affected, in a beneficial way, their working in the assignments, accessing and completing their assignments anywhere anytime. This saves time because they can start on their assignments straightway by accessing the virtual labs without reconfiguring their computers. 6.3. Conclusion The analysis of the questionnaire data presented above has met the objectives of the study. To meet the objectives the survey questions were divided into four factors as follows: assistance in learning, accessibility and ease of use, Virtual labs vs. Physical labs, and overall satisfaction of Virtual labs usage. Students were involved in this study responded positively to all research questions and according to the data collected they all seem appreciate the effectiveness of virtual labs. In fact, many of the students said that they will use virtual labs in future. 7. Discussion Use of virtual labs in education plays a vital role in assisting students complete their school work wherever they are provided they have an internet connection. The statistical analysis of the survey results made it clear that virtual labs help students in several ways such as completing their assignments in time and assisting them in their tutorial work. The results are self-explanatory, and the methods used to analyze the data obtained made them clearer. The survey specifically targeted IT students whereby survey questions were presented to 30 students of which 12 of them responded. The survey questions helped in achieving the key objectives of the study. The aim of this research was to fulfill the following four objectives: the importance of virtual labs in Information Technology learning; the importance of virtual labs in assisting the students with their tutorials, assignments, and group work; usability and accessibility of the Virtual labs; and future use of virtual labs in further studies. Several factors were addressed which helped in measuring and evaluating students’ satisfaction in using virtual labs in their studies. The factors considered include: assistance in Learning, accessibility and ease of use, Virtual labs vs. Physical labs, and overall satisfaction of Virtual labs usage. This section will present a discussion of the results obtained from the data collected. These results portray how the students who participated in the research responded to different survey questions presented to them. The first part of the survey questions addresses the issue on how virtual labs assist students in learning. According to the data which was gathered more than 80% of the students use virtual labs to complete their assignments and tutorial work. Majority of the students strongly agree that virtual labs plays a vital role in helping them to easily complete their assignment on time, and 92% of the students still wish to use virtual labs in their future studies. These results indicate that virtual labs play a crucial role in assisting students in their learning. Through the use of virtual labs, students are able to develop conceptual understanding of their courses requirements. Virtual labs also give students able time to practice on their own. Results obtained from the survey questions concerning the accessibility and usability of virtual labs indicates that not all students have an opportunity to use virtual labs. According to the results, 53% of the students responded positively and did not find any problem or barrier to access the virtual labs; 29 % of the students raised the issue of unreliable internet access; 18% of the students said that the use of IP addresses to connect with the Remote Virtual Machine lead to many problems such as lost IP, and restarting the server. The use of physical labs rather than virtual labs got a neutral rating. Many of the students prefer to use both labs, physical labs when they in the university and virtual labs when they are at home. Furthermore, 33% of student also had neutral view concerning the ease of using the Virtual Labs as compared to the Physical labs, although 8% of the students disagreed with this. The overall satisfaction of virtual labs usage by Information Technology students results indicate that students are aware of the benefits associated with the use of virtual labs. The results of this survey indicate that more than 83% of the students’ credit that Virtual labs will enhance the quality of studying IT courses. Additionally, 50% of the students agreed that virtual labs are important in learning the IT courses, and 33% of the students had a neutral view concerning this issue. Many students understand that virtual labs are designed to meet the need of a class, thus they can rely on them to attain better grades in their courses. For instance, some virtual labs incorporate operating instructions for lab equipment which are similar to what students would see in a lab manual. Virtual labs also ensure that students can practice using equipment in virtual realm before wasting resources with operational mistakes. 8. Conclusion Virtual labs play an important role in education, but this does not mean they should replace physical lab. Replacing physical labs will cause students to miss hand on experience that could be on value in other studies. However, virtual labs usage can also in enhancing those experiences. To improve effectiveness of virtual labs, they should be accessible to the students. Virtual labs accessibility will provide students who are not physically able to attend classes an opportunity to learn their courses requirements in a meaningful manner. It is also advisable for the instructors to go through virtual labs to determine whether they are appropriate for their students before allowing the students to use them. Some virtual labs may not match the content being taught, thus a thorough assessment should be carried before giving students a green light. Experiences gained through virtual labs usage helps students to reinforce their critical thinking skills and understand the concepts of their course requirements. Enriching the learning experiences of the students give them more chances to succeed. Virtual labs have many advantages as compared to it disadvantages. Students are able to receive instant feedbacks when carrying out their experiments in ‘processor time’. They also get an opportunity for self-analysis and reflection while using virtual labs. Virtual labs offer the students more ability to be creative without being restricted by safety concerns or resources. Although virtual labs assist students in their learning, they also pose some problems to the students. For instance, doing or repeating lab exercises outside instructional supervision can sometime be frustrating for students who lack conceptual understanding. While students value the importance of virtual labs in assisting them in their studies, they also appreciate the importance of physical labs. According to the research carried out in this study, students like using physical labs when they in the university and virtual labs when they are away from the campus. Many of the students who were involved in this study said that physical labs enhance their social life in the university. Thus, they prefer to use physical labs when handling their group work. The above argument indicates that physical labs will never be replaced by virtual labs. They are still useful and are helpful in handling some situations than virtual labs. Some problems require an instructor advice and this can only happen well in a physical lab environment. Read More