Abstract:
The Chief Examiners’ Reports in Mathematics, 2016 to 2018 of the West African Examination Council, show that Senior Secondary School (SSS) students’ performance in Circle Geometry (CG) in public examinations in Nigeria was poor. Past studies on improving students’ performance in circle geometry have focused largely on students’ and teachers’ characteristics, with little consideration for the use of software packages for its teaching and learning. Available software packages are rarely used in secondary schools because they are expensive, foreign, with complex programming languages. This study was, therefore, designed to develop and use Circle Geometry Software Package (CiGoSPac) for teaching and learning CG in senior secondary schools in Ibadan. The user friendliness of CiGoSPac was compared with that of a proprietary software package for teaching CG. The effectiveness of the CiGoSPac and the moderating effect of perceptual ability on students’ achievement in CG were also examined.
Mayer’s Multimedia and Connectivism Learning theories served as framework. The descriptive survey and a 3 x 2 pretest-posttest control group quasi-experimental designs were adopted. Three Phases - Phase I: development of the CiGoSPac, using enhanced Microsoft PowerPoint package and prototyping software development process. Voice, animation, text and hyperlink were used. Phase II: use of the CiGoSPac and Phase III: determining user friendliness of the CiGoSPac in comparison with proprietary software. The simple random sampling technique was employed to select two out of eight educational zones in Oyo State. The purposive sampling technique was used to select two local government areas and the twelve schools where the CiGoSPac was used. For Phase II, there were three treatment groups (Text+Animation+Voice), (Text+Animation), and Control. Twelve schools, 763 SSSII students and 16 teachers participated. For Phase III, 151 students were randomly selected from the 12 schools and 16 teachers participated. The Rating Scale for Software Evaluation Form A (r=0.89) and Form B (r=0.70), Rating Scale for Adequacy of Software (r=0.73), Checklist for Comparability of Software (r=0.87), Circle Geometry Achievement Test (CGAT) (r=0.79) and Perceptual Reasoning Ability Test (r=0.87) were used. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, and Analysis of covariance at 0.05 level of significance.
The CiGoSPac had three media (Text+Animation+Voice) and two media (Text+Animation). Ninety-three percent of the teachers rated the CiGoSPac as being adequate for teaching and learning of CG. Eighty percent of teachers and 65.8% of students rated CiGoSPac as being more user friendly than the proprietary software. Ninety-three percent of the teachers said they would recommend CiGoSPac for teaching CG in SSSs in Nigeria. There was significant main effect of treatment on students’ achievement in CG, F(2, 756)=142.00, partial 2=0.273. The Text+Animation+Voice group had the highest mean score in CGAT 41.08, while Text+Animation had 26.71, and control had 19.34. Perceptual reasoning ability had no significant effect on student’s achievement in CG. The interaction effect of treatment and perceptual reasoning ability was not significant on students’ achievement in CG.
Circle Geometry Software Package, a locally developed Software, is effective in learning Circle Geometry. Publishers should be encouraged to make it available to teachers and students.
