THE EFFECTS OF ICT BASED SCIENCE TEACHING ON THE PRIMARY STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENTS

1. THE EFFECTS OF ICT BASED SCIENCE TEACHING ON THE PRIMARY STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENTS Bulent Cavas, Pinar Cavas Dokuz Eylul University Turkey E-ducation Without Borders / 24-27 February 2007 / Abu Dhabi - UAE

2. Outline of Presentation • About our University & Turkey • The aim of the study • Methods and Samples • Teaching and Learning Environments integrated with ICT • Findings • Suggestions

3. We are from Izmir-Turkey Izmir is • located at Aegean cost • the 3rd biggest city • There are 5 Universities in Izmir • Historical and touristical place

4. Dokuz Eylul University-Short info. • We celebrated its 22nd anniversary last year • Active learning strategies are used for teaching and learning in our university. Faculty of medicine for the first time in Turkey is being adopted active learning system. • http://www.deu.edu.tr

5. Faculty of Education • Faculty of Education is a teacher training institution under Dokuz Eylul University • The main aim of the faculty is to train teachers fromearly childhood to secondary education levels. http://www.deu.edu.tr/egitim

6. Some International Studies: PISA and TIMSS PISA:Programme for International Student Assessment TIMSS:Third International Maths and Science Studies

7. TIMSS

8. PISA

9. As a result: • Turkish Students have some diffulty to understand science concepts. • Scientific Process Skills: Analysing, Critical thinking… • Teaching and Learning approaches…

10. Main Aim of the Study • To investigate the effects of ICT based science teaching on the primary students’ achievement. • To propose a learning approach that uses ICT in order to “support”, “enhance”, and “extend” both the teaching and learning processes for science courses

11. Why ICT in education? - Literature • Information Society • Students’ ICT Abilities • Learning and Teaching Environments

12. We know that; information and communication technologies (ICT) has positive effects on the students’ • achievements, • improvement of learning processes, • development of educational skills, • concentration, • communication, • metacognition, • motivation and • creativity (Monteith, 1998; Becta, 2001; Leask and Pachler, 1999, Barton, 1998; Hotle, 1998).

13. in Turkey? • Ministry of Education is carrying out basic studies which are directed to information and communication technologies in public schools in Turkey. • However, studies on integrating ICT in National Curriculum cannot be accepted as sufficient

14. Methods and Sample • 83 Primary students who were studying at two primary schools in the spring term of 2004-2005. • There were 43 students in the experimental group and 40 in the control group.

15. Students in the experimental group worked on microworlds and used Learning by Doing (LBD) environment on the internet as a means of communication in addition to their regular science and computer course in the curriculum. • On the other hand, students in the control group only attended the science and computer course. • The same teacher was used both two school for comparisons between students in the traditional courses and ICT based courses to reduce the impact of teacher characteristics on the results.

16. Teaching and learning tools in the study • Web pages • Animations • Learning by Doing Environment (LBD) • E-mail feedbacks from students • Pre and Post tests

17. Figure 1. One of the microworlds used in the study Web Pages

18. Learning by Doing Environment (LBD) • uses a real-time, interactive HTML formatted text, image, and animation messaging system. • The e-classroom, consisting of a main room and four breakout rooms for small e-group experiential e-activities and e-discussions, was password protected, monitored, and archived.

21. Data Analyses and Results researchers used • achievement test called CIYÜBT to determine successes of students in Cell and Tissue topics, • attitude scale called FBTÖ to determine attitude of students about science, • Learning environment called LBD to evaluate interaction of students in internet applications. • Interviews to determine possible misconceptions that students have at the beginning of the study

22. Results from study-1 • most students enter into learning process with many misconceptions. • In this study, it was observed that students can not unify topics in their minds, can not find relations between concepts and can not look at the topics with extensive perspective

23. Statistical findings: • According to data obtained from CİYUBT, it can be indicated that students from both groups were more successful than their first conditions. • In this case, it can be said that BİTBÖÖ and GÖO increase success of students. However, when the last tests were compared, students from experiment group were observed more successful than the students from control group. • These results show that, BİTGÖO is more effective than GÖO in increasing student success. When post tests were compared in statistical way, difference between groups was found significant in .005 levels. • To indicate effectiveness of used method, it is not enough to look at the post tests. With this aim, difference between obtainment scores of students was observed in two groups. Obtainment score of control group was found as 9.326 and obtainment score of experiment group was found as 14.059. When obtainment scores were compared in statistical way, difference between groups was found significant in 0.05 levels.

24. Attitudes? • To determine how BİTBÖO and GÖO that used in study affect attitudes of students to science, FBTÖ was applied before and after the study. • Data obtained from this scale indicated that there was not significant difference between beginning attitudes of students, but according to post attitudes students educated in BİTBÖO condition have more positive attitudes toward science than the students educated in GÖO condition. • Differences between groups and in the groups are the indicators that BİTBÖO used in experiment group made positive change in attitudes of students rather than GÖO used in control group.

25. Interaction? • In traditional education environments, it is a big problem that teachers can not observe development of students by one by. • in online learning environment, there are suitable methods and techniques to determine how much and in what level students participate into activities • To provide students to participate learning environment, students were provided to press on get/send button continuously reading messages which were sent to group.

26. After the applications made in 4 session, it was determined that students pressed get/send button totally 7.457 times. • Number of messages that were sent by students in one session was 1115; message numbers per students were found as 26. • Furthermore, message number in any times of sessions was found 22 per minute. • While communication rates of students with each other was low in the first session, in 3 th and 4th sessions it was determined that students communicated and shared opinions with each other in 37% and 35% levels.

27. In the study of Kolb (1984) about learning styles, it was indicated that there was significant relation between participating in learning environments and learning styles and students that are more active and set up interaction can learn easily. • When we look at in this way, LBD learning environment provide dynamic condition for students to indicate their ideas clearly and ask concepts that they did not understand.

28. Student Interaction in a group directed by teacher

30. gender and achievement? • there was no significant difference found between gender and achievement about cell and tissue topics. • To test this hypothesis, correlation analysis was made.

31. Results • Although substructure of ICT is excellent, teachers, who are the appliers of these technological equipments, should be given importance. • In the study of Voogt and van der Akker (2002), teachers have great roles in the learning environments that will be unified with ICT. • In the same study, it was discovered that, teachers can not unify ICT with education programs, traditional methods continue in schools do not correspond ICT and teachers see ICT as ineffective in learning environment.

32. As a suggestion to future studies, there are needed researches about learning strategies of students in learning environment, where unification is made about information and communication. • As a result, the present research shows that ICT based science courses can be effective in teaching students.

33. Technologically delivered or distance education will continue to transform the educational system and enhance the learning process. We need to learn how to use it efficiently and effectively. • Future research needs to account for these variables to understand their impact on student learning in these courses. • The results may help colleges identify more effective ways to design and teach technologically delivered or distance education courses

34. Thanks… Bulent Cavas bulent.cavas@deu.edu.tr Pinar Cavas pinar.huyuguzel@ege.edu.tr