Using Simulations and Screencasts in Online Preclass Activities to Support Student Building of Mental Models

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is an interesting and well written paper that contributes to the field by adding to the discussion concerning teacher/instructor support in the digital era.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your kind comment. 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper provides a very good discussion around the use of simulations and screencasts as preclass activities on an undergraduate chemistry course. Although both simulations and screen casts were found to have a positive impact on learning, screencasts were found to have additional benefits. The use of (and discussion of) concrete examples using commonly used software allows the reader to easily see how the findings could be applied in their own context.

The findings of the paper are a good contribution to the debate around minimally guided instruction vs. explicit instruction, with the results suggesting that the explicit instruction in the screencast helps to direct student attention compared with less guidance using the simulation on its own. Has any consideration been given to the quality of the teacher narration on the screencast? I would assume that poor quality instruction in the screencast would impact on the results. Was this part of the review process?

Could more detail be given around the enhanced screencast activity mentioned in Figure 2? What did this involve?

Has any statistical analysis been carried out to see if there is a significant difference between the use of the simulations and screencasts?

Has any work been done to see if there is a difference on the impact of preclass activities for lab based learning compared with class based learning?

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The quality of English is very good, however I found the sentence starting on line 9 (in the Abstract) to be unclear.

Author Response

Thank you for your helpful comments. Our responses to each comment/question are included below.

1. Has any consideration been given to the quality of the teacher narration on the screencast? I would assume that poor quality instruction in the screencast would impact on the results. Was this part of the review process?

This is of course true for any instruction. This is why we used a backward design process for designing the activities so we could ensure that the learning objectives, assessments, and instructional activities were well aligned. Further, the iterative evaluation process allowed us to identify areas where instruction needed to be clarified. We have added a couple of sentences to explicitly highlight this important factor at the beginning of part 2.

2. Could more detail be given around the enhanced screencast activity mentioned in Figure 2? What did this involve?

We have added some detail about this in section 2, just before Figure 2. Here we inform readers that the specific enhancements are discussed in more detail in section 3.1 and where we discuss those in section 3.1 we explicitly refer back to Fig. 2 and the Enhanced Screencast Activity. 

3. Has any statistical analysis been carried out to see if there is a significant difference between the use of the simulations and screencasts?

Yes, we have now made that explicit in section 3.1.

4. Has any work been done to see if there is a difference on the impact of preclass activities for lab-based learning compared with class-based learning?

We focused specifically on the use of conceptual simulations in preclass activities for classroom instruction. There are of course lab simulations, which are more so operational simulations that provide practice with skills or lab techniques, but the discussion of these was beyond the scope of our research focus. Further, some conceptual simulations, particularly the PhET simulations, have been used in lab-based activities, but to our knowledge, there has not been any work specifically looking at their use in pre-lab activities. This may be because the learning objectives for pre-lab work are more focused on lab techniques and procedures and less on a conceptual understanding of the content. 

5. The quality of English is very good, however I found the sentence starting on line 9 (in the Abstract) to be unclear.

We revised this sentence to clarify.