Development of a PhET-Assisted Contextual Inquiry Physics Module to Support Critical Thinking and Digital Literacy

Abstract

Critical thinking and digital literacy are essential competencies for twenty-first-century learning, yet their development in physics education remains constrained by learning materials that do not systematically integrate scientific inquiry with digital technology. This study aimed to develop a physics module on Work and Energy using a contextual inquiry approach assisted by Physics Education Technology (PhET) simulations and to examine its validity, practicality, and changes in students’ critical thinking and digital literacy following a limited implementation. The study employed a Research and Development (R&D) method using the ADDIE model, comprising analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation. The limited trial involved 31 Grade 10 students at SMAN 5 Mataram. Data were collected using expert-validation sheets, practicality questionnaires, a critical-thinking test, and a digital-literacy questionnaire, and were analyzed using descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, normality testing, normalized gain (N-Gain), and the Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test. The module achieved an average validity score of 88.8% and an average practicality score of 86%. Critical-thinking scores increased from 48.2 to 82.6 with an N-Gain of 0.74, whereas digital-literacy scores increased from 46.5 to 88.9 with an N-Gain of 0.79. The Wilcoxon test indicated significant differences between pretest and posttest scores for both variables (p < 0.001). These findings suggest that the module has potential to support the development of critical thinking and digital literacy in a limited-trial context; however, the single-group design without a comparison group does not permit causal inference