EFFECT OF COMPUTER AIDED INSTRUCTION ON STUDENTS' ACHIEVEMENT AND RETENTION BY EGBODO BENSON

ABSTRACT

The study investigated the effect of computer-aided instruction on junior secondary students’ achievement and retention in basic science. The study utilized a non-randomized quasi-experimental design. Multi-stage sampling technique was used in selecting samples of 120 from a population of 1050 JS II students in Oju local government area.  The researcher developed CAI packages which were used as treatment for experimental group while control group was exposed to conventional method. BSART was the instrument for data collection. A reliability coefficient of 0.78 was obtained using Kuder Richardson’s (KR21) formula. The study was guided by four research questions and four null hypotheses. The research questions were answered using mean and standard deviation while ANCOVA was used to test hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study showed that there was significant difference between the achievement scores of students exposed to computer-aided instruction and conventional method (p = 0.00 and a = 0.05; p < a). Also, students in the experimental group retained better than their control method counterparts (p = 0.00 and a = 0.05; p < a). However, no significant difference existed in the achievement (p = 0.58 and a = 0.05; p > a) and retention (p = 0.46 and a = 0.05; p > a) of the male and female students exposed to CAI. It was therefore, recommended that government and NGOs should fund development of computer-aided instructional packages and train manpower to produce software for science education teaching to enhance achievement and retention.