Investigation of the effects of scorm adapted whiteboard movie techniques on students’ success in physics classes

Nowadays, people discovered that the education they have taken supports their lifelong achievements. However, it can not always be reached. Therefore, there are still on-going studies on how to allow everybody to reach the modern education. Traditional teaching methods are still dominant because of its simplicity, lower cost and its success on partly covering the people's needs. This model cannot solve the problem of finding a sufficient number of qualified teachers even in developed countries. To reduce this problem, non-simultaneous learning approaches come into the mind. In recent years, these methods have been using the traditional postal services and the internet in order to deliver course materials. These non-simultaneous methods make course materials accessible anytime without a need for an instructor. More than half of big institutions (Institutions that have a student population over 7500 students) offer at least one online program (Allen & Seaman, 2006).

Most of the education given in this way is based on the use of the non-simultaneous World Wide Web (www) technology. It is possible to reach educational materials via the internet in the format of texts and graphics. Since storing the present files may constitute the basis of an educational web site, it is easy to make this approach available. However, it is quite a time consuming process for educators to establish a non-simultaneous learning web site. This process requires combining the electronic documents with an online learning management system which supports special courses. In this way, it is possible to reach further levels than the present level of non-simultaneous distance learning. In our study, the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) was used. VLE is a software system developed for the purpose of helping teachers and students manage the educational context. This system can be monitored by both teachers and students. Virtual learning environments were defined as partly open computer-based systems which allow reaching the educational resources, sharing knowledge and establishing interactions between participants (Wilson, 1996). The virtual learning environment actually means providing "learning anytime and anywhere" by putting the resources for self-learning in order and by providing context learning and active learning (Chou & Liu, 2005). Moodle is a virtual learning environment in which we can do all of the above mentioned features. Moodle stands for "Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment". Moodle is an open-source software platform. Moodle was designed for the purpose of helping educators develop online educational software with its high interaction opportunities. Its open source license and unit design provide context experts with opportunities to develop additional functions.

The Moodle design is modular, and it can be enriched easily by adding new functions. The infrastructure of Moodle supports a lot of plug-ins such as activities, resource types, question types, data types (for database activities), linear themes, confirmation methods, recording methods, context filters and reports. The development of Moodle was supported by the efforts of the community of open source programmers. These efforts contributed to its rapid development. At the same time, Moodle can be used in lots of educational applications. Thus, the Whiteboard movies in this study were operated on Moodle.

Whiteboard movies are screen plays in which the text and the sound are recorded together and can be transformed into various formats such as flash movies including problem solutions and explanations of mathematical concepts. These whiteboard movies can be distributed in CDs or via the internet. Whiteboard movies can be quite simple as a one-minute short recording without an audio (WBM) or can be very complex as an interactive educational movie in which the learner can find solutions to questions or explanations regarding the solutions to similar problems.

In 1997, Tim Fahlberg was the pioneer of WBM (Fahlberg, 2004; Fahlberg & Nonis, 2005). Widely accepted, this method was used in various educational contexts ranging from primary education to higher education. The present status of WBM, which was started as a big project, has been achieved as a result of longitudinal studies. WBMs are very simple to use. They include some activities and facilities such as watching and listening to the subject taught, listening to it at any time, rehearsing the subject at any time, watching and listening to each step and understanding the method used (http://www.mathcasts.org).

At the beginning, WBM was thought to be an effective and supportive non-classroom method rather than tutoring or other educational supports. It was initially developed by Tim Fahlberg as a mathematical website including videos and audios. Later, he distributed TechSmith's Camtasia Studio via the web and in CDs after producing many high-quality WBMs by using Corel Grafio with the help of a graphical tablet or tablet PC between the years of 2000 and 2003 years (http://www.coolschooltools.com/whiteboardmovies.html). WBM is a learning technique which is mostly used in mathematical education. Most common questions about WBM are: How easy is it to produce a WBM? What is the cost of producing a WBM? It is important that educators know how WBMs can be integrated into the educational process in order to reach the expected quality of learning outcomes in visual and audio dimensions. Since mathematics and geometry are important in physics education both in experimental and theoretical basis, WBMs that are used in mathematics education can also be used in physics education.

In this study, it was believed that web based learning (WBL) materials would eliminate some of the present problems in application since (WBL) materials allow students to study at their own pace. Thus, a website that has both visual and audio features was designed. The overall purpose of the present study was to investigate the effects of these teaching materials on students’ achievements in the units of “force” and “movement”.