The experimental group The teams of the experimental group started working on Task I when the computer monitors were off. In two of the four sessions no one asked about the computer. These events suggest that students, who were familiar with the simulation, didn’t realise that it could be of any help. In each of the other two sessions, one student turned on the monitor immediately, then most of the teams followed. As a result, the simulation became part of the obvious working environment for 17 teams in the experimental group. Even after the computers were set running, only two teams ran the simulation to draw the first diagram. As in the control group, students drew the diagram on the worksheets and tried to test it against reality. After a while, 11 more teams, who were not satisfied with their sketch, or couldn’t decide between several options, tried to use the simulation (that was already running). They created a simulated model and tried to compare its function with the real circuit. As a result, the experimental group was split to two subgroups: 13 teams who used the simulation and 21 teams who did not use it in Task I. Table 2 summarises the data collected on Task I. Teams that used the simulation seemed to be more successful that those of the control group (χ2 = 16.9, p < 0.001) and of the experimental subgroup who did not use the simulation (χ2 = 7.2, p < 0.05). No significant difference was found between the experi-mental subgroup who did not use the simulation and the control group.
Table 2. Summary and analysis of