Information Technology in Inquiry-Based Learning: An Alternative Approach to Enhance Students' Performance in Science

Integration of information technology in inquiry-based learning approach in teaching and learning is another endeavor in Science education. Conventional or traditional teaching and learning is an avenue common to the students and teacher where teachers serve as the fountain of knowledge while the student serves as the receiver of the information. To decide whether the method is successful, the science performance of the participants for the controlled and experimental groups was evaluated. The participants are composed of 40 second-year bachelor of elementary education students were half of it is randomly assigned as the control group and the other is assigned as the experimental group. Participants in the experimental group were informed that they are allowed to utilized gadgets during the class, class is scheduled every morning two times a week one after the other with forty minutes of contact time in each group. The experimentation cover five weeks and two days and both groups were using the same book reference having the class focused on properties of matters with three subtopics prescribed based on the BEEd Science curriculum. A researchers-made instrument in Science was developed by the researchers and used in the gathering of data. To ensure resemblance of each group at the start of the intervention, grade matching strategy and pretesting was done as the basis in construct the experimental and control group. The pretest performance of the participants was at the below-average level in both groups. The pretest of the participants resembles each other pretest performance which is also confirmed by testing the difference. The post-test science performance was below average and relative to the post-test science performance of both groups, the experimental group's post-test results were greater than that of the control group. There is an increase in the performance of both groups from pretest to posttest; the test of difference confirmed that both groups had an increase in performance. The increase in the performance of the participants under the inquiry-based approach with the integration of information and technology is higher than that of the conventional approach as confirmed by testing the difference. Hence, the inquiry-based approach with the integration of information and technology is somewhat effective to increase the performance in Science. Challenges that are found in implementing an inquiry-based approach with the integration of the information and technology were the limited internet connectivity to no internet connectivity at home and the limited memory space in the gadget owned by the participants.