The purpose was to investigate ways to integrate computational and experimental activities to make them complementary, thus helping students to achieve meaningful learning of physics concepts and to understand some ideas about scientific models. We designed a didactical approach covering electromagnetism topics at the level of General Physics based on Ausubel's meaningful learning theory, Bunge's epistemological view about scientific models and science development and Vygotsky's social-interaction theory. This didactical approach was applied to a class of undergraduate physics students. The results show that the integration of these two kinds of activities can provide the students a more appropriate epistemological perspective of the roles of theoretical models in Physics and experimental and computational activities in the learning processes. This encourages interactivity and engagement of the students with their own learning, transforming the classroom into an environment suitable for the meaningful learning of physical concepts of electromagnetism.
Computer activities; Experimental activities; Electromagnetism; Physics teaching; Higher edu-cation; Didactics
