Effects of Digital Scaffolding on Students' Conceptual Knowledge of Radiation and Radioactivity

ABSTRACT Background Teachers have their students practice physics problems both at home and in class. In class, the teacher provides students who need help with feedback. However, at home, students do not receive such feedback. A digital system that provides support outside the classroom could improve student performance. Objectives This study aimed to determine whether digital scaffolding can improve students' conceptual physics knowledge. The study addressed the topic of radiation and radioactivity, a secondary school physics subject that introduces many new concepts. Methods The study involved a double‐blind, randomized controlled trial with a pre‐test and a post‐test. The Digi‐Feedback web‐based software was designed to provide students with digital scaffolding during all phases of problem solving, and Digi‐Feedback kept logs of all student actions. Results and Conclusions Students' conceptual knowledge was enhanced by straightforward scaffolding, especially scaffolding that encouraged them to compare their solutions with worked examples. Immediate feedback played a crucial role here, as it helped to direct students towards correcting solutions real‐time, enabling them to correct errors and reinforce understanding. This immediate feedback fosters a responsive learning environment, allowing students to explore complex concepts more effectively. They deepened their conceptual knowledge by studying a worked example when they had first developed their own solution. The findings indicate that easily applied digital scaffolding has the potential to increase students' conceptual knowledge without extra time investment from students and teachers. This method of digital scaffolding could potentially be applied in other STEM subjects as well.