Enhancing lower secondary school physics learning through virtual laboratories in Morocco

Given the ongoing problems with teaching physical sciences in Morocco, particularly with experimental practices, where there are shortages of experimental materials and laboratories in some lower secondary schools. The integration of a Virtual Laboratory (VL) into science education offers an appealing alternative for traditional laboratory-based instruction. This study employed a quasi-experimental pre-test/post-test control group design to examine whether a curriculum-aligned VL integrated into a Moodle-based platform could enhance students’ physics learning outcomes. 67 first-year lower secondary school students participated in a quasi-experimental study with pre-test/post-test in Tangier, Morocco. The control group (n = 35) received traditional instruction, while the experimental group (n = 32) participated in two specially designed simulations via the MySmartPhysics platform. The results were compared and analysed using Student’s t-test and Mann-Whitney U-test. While no significant differences were observed at pre-test, post-test results revealed a statistically significant improvement in favour of the experimental group, t(65) = −2.720, p = .008, with a moderate effect size (Cohen’s d = 0.67). Item-level analysis indicated that this difference emerged primarily in application-oriented tasks rather than knowledge-recall items. These findings suggest that the pedagogical contribution of virtual laboratories may lie less in memorisation and more in supporting structured reasoning and conceptual transfer. The study provides empirical evidence for the cognitive differentiation of VL impact in resource-constrained contexts and supports the development of structured hybrid laboratory models combining physical and virtual experimentation.