SOURCE:

Faculty: Education
Department: Science Education

CONTRIBUTORS:

Chikendu, R.E;
Okoli, J.N;

ABSTRACT:

This study investigated the effect of instructional computer animation on secondary school students’ achievement and interest in chemistry in Awka Education Zone. The reason for the study is that there is a general poor achievement of students’ in secondary school certificate chemistry examinations. The purpose of the study was to determine the effect of the use of instructional computer animation on students’ achievement and interest in chemistry. Four research questions guided the study and six null hypotheses were tested. The study adopted a quasi-experimental design specifically, pretest-posttest non-equivalent control group design. Population of the study consisted of all the 2927 Senior Secondary Year Two chemistry students in the 61state owned secondary schools in Awka Educational Zone. The sample consisted of 186 students drawn from two co-educational secondary schools out of the 46 co-educational secondary schools in Awka Education Zone. One of the schools was randomly assigned to experimental group while the other was assigned to control group. Chemistry Achievement Test (CAT) and Chemistry Interest Scale (CIS) were the instruments used to collect data for the study. The CAT of 25 items and CIS of 17 items were trial tested on an intact class of 40 students outside the study area. The reliability coefficient of CAT was established to be 0.72 using Kuder Richardson (KR-20) while reliability coefficient of CIS was established to be 0.78 using Cronbach alpha. The CAT and the CIS were administered to the students as pretest and posttest for data collection. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while Analysis of Covariance was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The result revealed that instructional computer animation had significant effect on students’ achievement and interest in chemistry. Female students performed better than the male students taught using instructional computer animation. This implies that instructional computer animation enhances students’ achievement and interest in chemistry. Based on the results of the study, it was recommended that instructional computer animation be adopted by chemistry teachers for teaching chemistry concepts to secondary school students. Curriculum planners should incorporate and emphasize the use of instructional computer animation as an alternative to conventional method.