Achievement of Physics Students With and Without Laboratory Work

Two general physics laboratory groups were compared in achievement with a group enrolled in the same course without laboratory. The achievement was measured by two pencil-paper examinations and two laboratory performance tests. The analysis of variance and covariance method was used to hold constant three measures of initial differences among students. There were no statistically significant differences between the means of the groups on the mechanics theory test. The laboratory groups were significantly better than the no-laboratory group on all tests dealing with laboratory work.