The Physics Laboratory in Higher Education in Libya
type: CreativeWork
description: Laboratory work is considered to be a vital part of the entire learning experience in physics and work in the laboratory has the potential to help make physics more real and tangible for the students while they can develop experimental design skills as well as developing observational and problem-solving skills. Sometimes, difficult concepts can be illustrated while laboratory work also offers opportunities for learners to develop skills in thinking, questioning, planning, and interpreting data as well as an opportunity to develop group working skills. Above all, physics, like all other sciences, gains its insights by means of experimentation and learners need experience of this. In addition, laboratory work has an important role in understanding a subject like physics in that it can make physics more real for the students. More importantly, there is great scope for developing laboratory learning which will enhance understanding as well as give the students an experience of how experimental evidence is used to develop the insights in physics. The question here is: does laboratory courses in higher education actually achieve these goals in a developing country such as Libya where the laboratories are not highly equipped while the staff and the teachers are not trained adequately? Studies have shown that, in laboratory learning, students follow instruction sheets like recipes with little understanding what they are doing, tending to generate negative attitudes. Some key studies have shown clearly that cognitive overload is the source of the problem: the learner’s has to cope with too many ideas at the same time. This study explored this idea and considered how the cognitive load can be reduced, enabling cognitive capacity to be available for greater understanding.The entire work was carried out on three stages with the students in the Faculty of Science at Sebha University, a typical university in Libya. The first experimental study (N = 150) aimed to gain an overall …
abstract: Laboratory work is considered to be a vital part of the entire learning experience in physics and work in the laboratory has the potential to help make physics more real and tangible for the students while they can develop experimental design skills as well as developing observational and problem-solving skills. Sometimes, difficult concepts can be illustrated while laboratory work also offers opportunities for learners to develop skills in thinking, questioning, planning, and interpreting data as well as an opportunity to develop group working skills. Above all, physics, like all other sciences, gains its insights by means of experimentation and learners need experience of this. In addition, laboratory work has an important role in understanding a subject like physics in that it can make physics more real for the students. More importantly, there is great scope for developing laboratory learning which will enhance understanding as well as give the students an experience of how experimental evidence is used to develop the insights in physics. The question here is: does laboratory courses in higher education actually achieve these goals in a developing country such as Libya where the laboratories are not highly equipped while the staff and the teachers are not trained adequately? Studies have shown that, in laboratory learning, students follow instruction sheets like recipes with little understanding what they are doing, tending to generate negative attitudes. Some key studies have shown clearly that cognitive overload is the source of the problem: the learner’s has to cope with too many ideas at the same time. This study explored this idea and considered how the cognitive load can be reduced, enabling cognitive capacity to be available for greater understanding.The entire work was carried out on three stages with the students in the Faculty of Science at Sebha University, a typical university in Libya. The first experimental study (N = 150) aimed to gain an overall …
author: Ali Hamed, Saffia
language: eng
keywords: Laboratory work, Pre-laboratory exercises, Working memory capacity, Higher education
date published: 2013
date modified: 2026-07-24T02:07:46Z
provider: University of Dundee
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Dundee