IMPACT OF MULTIMEDIA PROGRAMME IN TEACHING SCIENCE FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF ATTITUDE TOWARDS COMPUTER

                                               

V. Nimavathi

R. Gnanadevan

INTRODUCTION

In a vast country like India, enormous work is now being done in the field of education, but it is still not possible to equip each and every school with all the facilities for teaching science. The secondary schools need high quality teaching aids. Multimedia, as a teaching aid,  is very much  effective with colour, sound, graphics, which are found in the audio media and video media and movie media.  Any diagram can be explained in detail with 3D effect, which helps the students to understand clearly. Multimedia can present the biological information concepts so as  to develop generic skills. The students can get a live vision of life’s aspects and scientific factors. Multi media includes use of computer. The students who have favourable attitude towards the computer  can  very effectively use  multimedia. If the students have unfavourable attitude towards computer, they may be  interested  in learning by  using  multimedia. Therefore,  the present study aims to  find out the impact of multimedia programme in teaching science for the development of attitude towards computer.

 

OBJECTIVES

1. To prepare multimedia programme for the teaching of science at secondary level;

2. To find out whether there is a significant difference between: (a) mean achievement test scores of the experimental group and control group before experimentation; (b) mean achievement test scores of the experimental group and control group after experimentation;

(c) mean attitude towards computer scores of experimental group and control group before experimentation; and (d) mean attitude towards computer scores of experimental group and control group after experimentation.

 

HYPOTHESES

1. There is a significant difference between the mean achievement test scores of experimental group and control group after experimentation;

2. There is a significant difference between the mean attitude towards computer scores of experimental group and control group after experimentation.

 

METHOD

Sample

The sample of the study consisted of 60 students studying ninth standard in three different schools under Tamil Nadu Board syllabus (Tamil medium) in Thiruvannamalai district.  The sample included both boys and girls.

 

Tools

1. An achievement test in science constructed and validated by the investigator;

2. Computer attitude scale standardized by S. Pramila to find out the attitude of students towards computer;

3. Multimedia programme, in Macromedia flash version 6.0, developed by the investigators for the teaching of the concepts in Biology topics included in the ninth standard science syllabus (Tamil medium) that provides multimedia platform to attract the senses of the learner for easy and happy learning. 

 

Procedure

The physiology lesson of ninth standard was broken down into 84 small learning modules.  All the learning modules were  based on the psychological principles of learning i.e., proceeding from easy to difficult, simple to complex and from the known to the unknown.  Two group experimental designs were adopted.  The sample was divided into two groups viz, experimental group and control group. The students of experimental group were taught with the computer multimedia programme and the control group through the conventional method.  After the treatment period, post-test was administered. The collected data were subjected to statistical analyses and the results obtained were interpreted.

 

FINDINGS

The ‘t’ test was applied to test the significance of difference between the mean achievement test scores of the experimental group and the control group before experimentation. The ‘t’ value (0.14) was not significant at 0.05 level. Hence, it can be inferred that there was no significant difference between the mean achievement test scores of experimental group and control group before experimentation. The ‘t’ test was applied to test the significance of difference between the mean achievement test scores of the experimental group and the control group after experimentation. The  ‘t’ value (12.9) was significant at 0.01 level. The students of the experimental group and control group differed significantly in their mean achievement test scores after experimentation. As indicated by the mean value, the students of the experimental group fared better in their achievement than the students of the control group. Hence, the multimedia increased the achievement of the students.

 

The  ‘t’ test was applied to test the significance of difference between the mean attitude towards computer scores of the experimental group and the control group before experimentation. The  ‘t’ value (1.21) was not significant at 0.05 level.  Hence, there was no significant difference between the mean attitude towards computer scores of experimental group and control group before experimentation.The  ‘t’ test was applied to test the significance of difference between the mean attitude towards computer scores of the experimental group and the control group after experimentation. The  ‘t’ value (3.82) was significant at 0.01 level.  Hence, the students of the experimental group and control group differed significantly in their attitude towards computer after experimentation.  As indicated by the mean value, the students of the experimental group showed favourable attitude towards computer than the students of the control group after experimentation. The students learning with the help of multimedia showed favourable attitude towards computer than the students learning through the conventional method.

 

Other findings included  no significant difference between the mean achievement test scores of experimental group and control group before experimentation. There was a significant difference between the mean achievement test scores of experimental group and control group after experimentation. The students of the experimental group fared better in their achievement than the students of the control group, after experimentation. This showed that the multimedia increased the achievement of the students. There was no significant difference between the mean attitude towards computer scores of experimental group and control group before experimentation. There was a significant difference between the mean attitude towards computer scores of experimental group and control group after experimentation. The students of the experimental group showed favourable attitude towards computer than the students of the control group after experimentation. The students learning with the help of multimedia had favourable attitude towards computer than the students learning through the conventional method.

 

CONCLUSION

The results of this study reveal that that multimedia has an impact in teaching science to ninth standard students and also in their attitude towards computer.

 

REFERENCES

Mitra, A. (1998) Categories of computer use and their relationships with attitudes toward computers. Journal of Research on Computing in Education 30, 3, p.281.

King-Dow Su and Ming-Auey Lee. (2005) A new evaluation for integrating multimedia technology with science: student performance in mathematical limit learning. World Transactions on Engineering and Technology Education 4, 2, 1-5.

Selvi, P. (2002) Effectiveness of Computer assisted instruction among higher secondary students (12th stanadard) with special reference to nuclear Physics. Experiments in Education 30, 2, 29-33.