Enhancing and assisting laboratory teaching of electrical circuits using ICT: An evaluation of educational software

The present study aimed at the evaluation and comparison of two example of educational software by Vocational School students - namely of Edison 5 and of Crocodile Technology 3D 6.1.0. Both these software packages can be used not only for the teaching of Vocational School speciality third grade courses but also for the teaching of the physics courses at Junior and Senior High Schools, as well as for those of the first and second grades of Vocational Schools. For the purpose of this evaluation, 76 participants, from a Vocational School (aged 16 to 20 years old), were asked to use them for 8 hours and in parallel with ordinary lab work to design simple electric circuits, through both of the aforementioned software packages, and through these to study circuit laws, formulate conclusions, and finally select the software they considered the most appropriate for the teaching of electric circuits. Upon completion of their tasks, students went through a closed type questionnaire, resulting to a definite choice as the most preferable and most appropriate software package for the teaching of electric circuits. The results are discussed herein and some interesting conclusions are drawn.