Some of the educational benefits claimed for this type of instructional activities include facilitating active learning, promoting interaction, and motivating students (Haury & Rillero, 1994 Satterthwait, 2010). Physical hands-on strategies have often been suggested as effective approaches to improve learning (Carbonneau et al., 2013). The use of physical manipulatives in hands-on activities has been a widespread tradition in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines. In particular, engineering educators seeking to enhance students' attention should consider adopting physical manipulatives in their classrooms, although they must be aware of the potential sex differences that could be caused by their use.
The findings from this study associate the benefits of using physical materials with an increase in motivation rather than with superior learning gains. Finally, we found that male students showed more confidence than female students when using physical manipulatives but not when using virtual ones. This difference was especially significant in the attention dimension. We also found that the students were more motivated to learn through the use of physical materials than with virtual ones. Our results revealed that the physical and virtual conditions were equally effective in promoting students' understanding of basic structural engineering concepts in a classroom setting. Motivation and its components (attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction) were assessed with Keller's Instructional Materials Motivation Survey. We used a pretest/posttest quasi-experimental design with a purposely developed conceptual test to measure students' understanding of basic structural engineering concepts. The study followed a between-subjects design involving 209 university students and seven instructors. This study examines the comparative effect of physical and virtual materials on students' conceptual understanding and motivation to learn structural concepts with manipulatives. However, especially in disciplines in which tactile concepts (e.g., force) are included, it has been claimed that learning could be compromised by substituting physical materials with computer simulations. Recent advances in technology and computer simulation have expanded the use of virtual manipulatives in engineering education.
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