Can a Combination of Hands-on Experiments and Computers Facilitate Better Learning in Mechanics?

Microcomputer-Based Laboratories (MBL) have been successfully used to promote conceptual growth in mechanics understanding among preservice teachers and engineering students. In MBL laboratories students do real hands-on experiments where real-time display of the experimental results facilitates conceptual growth. Thus students can immediately compare their predictions with the outcome of an experiment, and students ' alternative conceptions can thus successfully be addressed. We also report from a case where only MBL-technology was implemented, but the students were not asked to make predictions. As a result "misconceptions" were not confronted and conceptual change was not achieved among "weak " students