Using a Digital Multi-meter as an Inexpensive Data Logger Substitute

This is the Author's Original Manuscript as submitted to SCIOS, the journal of the Science Teachers' Association of Western Australia (STAWA), published in Vol. 47, No. 2, June 2011 (Informit: https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/aeipt.196483). It is archived here to ensure open access for the STEM education community, as the final typeset version is behind a commercial paywall. The author received no author copy of the published version. This paper describes the use of commercially available digital multi-meters (DMMs) as low-cost, robust substitutes for dedicated data logging equipment in primary and secondary science and mathematics classrooms. The author developed a range of single-component sensors costing a few cents each, enabling DMMs to measure visible light, infra-red light, ultra-violet light, ionising radiation, temperature, angle, humidity, pressure, salinity, static electric fields, mobile phone transmissions, and more. Practical strategies for configuring DMMs for classroom use are described, including a dial cover to reduce student confusion and a terminal block modification to improve safety and ease of sensor connection. A structured three-stage pedagogical framework was invented: Build a Sensor - Test Your Sensor - Use Your Sensor, which guided student learning from initial confidence-building activities through to inquiry-based investigations. Trials with Year 9 mathematics students confirmed findings from the author's earlier 2008 RIGEL research: that practical, hands-on investigations using authentic data result in higher student engagement, more authentic learning, and deeper understanding of scientific concepts. Students reached relational and higher stages of the SOLO taxonomy in both science and mathematics contexts. The paper argues that DMMs represent a practical solution to the equity problem in STEM education, where high equipment costs and complexity restrict data logging to senior classes, by providing a device that is already commercially available, low cost, chemically and electrically safe, and simple enough for junior year levels. The possibility of students purchasing their own DMM as personal stationery is raised as a further equity-oriented strategy enabling data collection outside school and inside a learners home or community. Supporting resources including video demonstrations of sensor construction have been publicly available since 2010, currently maintained at https://mikefentonnz.github.io/projects/digital-multimeters-as-data-loggers.html Supporting materials were originally hosted on the Nexus Research Group website from 2008 and have remained continuously publicly accessible. This work sits between the author's 2008 RIGEL research and the 2025 Casio calculator data logger system, forming part of a continuous body of practice-embedded research into low-cost, authentic science instrumentation for New Zealand classrooms spanning nearly two decades.