Publication Details
Abstract
This study investigated the “Impact of Interactive Simulations on Secondary School Chemistry Students’ Achievement and Interest in Abuja Municipal Area Council”. The sample of the study comprised Two hundred and sixty-four (264; M= 168, F=96) students selected from four co-educational senior secondary schools in Abuja Municipal Area Council. There were one experimental group and a control group. One treatment instrument namely, PhET interactive simulations instructional package was adopted to examine its impact on students’ achievement and interest. The research design was a quasi-experimental, pretest posttest control design. The experimental group was taught using PhET interactive simulations package and the control group was taught using lecture method. The Chemistry Achievement Test (CAT) of 20 items was validated by experts for data collection. The reliability of the items instrument was ascertained using Cronbach Alpha formula and a coefficient of 0.826 was obtained. Four (4) hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 alpha levels. The data were analyzed using mean, Standard Deviation and ANCOVA Statistic. The findings of the study revealed that students in experimental group achieved significantly better than their counterpart in the control group. There was statistically no significant difference in the achievement of Male and Female students of experimental group. Also, there was significant mean interest score of experimental group with interest inventory test, the mean difference of strongly agreed and agreed for the PhET interactive simulations out measured the other Likert scale. In addition, there was no significant difference in the mean interest score of male and female students in the group. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that the use of PhET downloaded interactive simulations for teaching and learning should be encouraged in Nigerian schools.
Keywords
Achievement
Interest
Learning outcomes
Open Educational Resources (OERs)
Open source
PhET
Simulations