Effects of Computer Graphics and Animation Instructional Modes on Secondary School Students' Achievement and Retention in Genetics

There is a perceived trend of poor academic achievement and retention of students in genetics in Nigerian Secondary schools today. This situation has been attributed to many factors one of which is poor method of teaching. Against this background that this study determined the effects of computer graphics and animation instructional modes on secondary school students? achievement in genetics. Four research questions were raised and two research hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. The research design was quasi ? experimental. Three groups (two experimental and one control) made up of 135 senior secondary one (SS1) students were drawn from the population of 2, 608 SSI students. Purposive random sampling was used to select three public secondary schools from Aguata Education Zone of Anambra state. One instrument was used for data collection namely, Genetics Achievement Test (GAT). Three experts validated the instruments. The instrument was trial tested and the GAT gave a reliability coefficient of 0.89. Before treatment was given they were pretested with GAT. After five weeks of teaching they were post-tested GAT though the items positions juxtaposed to make it look different from the pretest. Three weeks after the post-test was given, the items position of GAT were rearranged again and administered as Genetics Retention Test (GRT) to the students. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while Analysis of Co-variance (ANCOVA) was used to test the null hypotheses. The findings indicated that computer graphics and animation instructional modes had significant effects on the achievement and retention scores of students in genetics. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that biology teachers should adopt the use of computer graphics and animation in the teaching of genetics in order to enhance the performance of students and retention of knowledge in genetics. Government and education authorities should sponsor biology teachers to workshops and seminars to learn how to improve their teaching skills using computer graphics and animation.