Effects of Ubiquitous-Physics App on Students’ Inquiry Behaviors and Learning Achievements

The Ubiquitous-Physics (U-Physics) app was upgraded to help students in learning inclined plane concepts. The new version of U-Physics allows students to see the experimental data not only in a graphical representation but also in a tabular representation. U-Physics provides a whiteboard function to support data explanations. The study investigated the differences between experimental students who use U-Physics (EG) and control students who do not use the app (CG) in terms of learning achievements. Additionally, we studied the free body diagram ability of students by giving them a test and analyzed its relationship to inquiry behaviors (interpreting graphs, applying formulas, and drawing conclusions) and learning achievements. Two 11th-grade classes (EG = 15 and CG = 32) participated in this quasi-experimental design. Our findings showed that the students who use U-Physics performed better than those who do not use the app in terms of learning achievements. Inquiry behaviors have a significant correlation with students’ learning achievements, and drawing conclusions is a predictor to affect students’ learning achievements. Additionally, most students agreed that U-Physics is beneficial for their physics learning. Thus, we strongly suggest teachers to use U-Physics and involve inquiry behaviors in physics laboratories to enhance students’ inquiry thinking and learning achievements while conducting physics experiments.