DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF EDUTAINMENT INSTRUCTIONAL PACKAGES FOR TEACHING BIOLOGY AT SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL IN NIGERIA

Abstract

This study was conducted to develop and validate Edutainment Instructional Package on Biology for teaching senior secondary school students in Nigeria. The WAEC (2015) reported poor performance of students who sat for West African Secondary School Certificate Examination (WASSCE). Several reports revealed the causes for poor students' performance to include: conventional teacher-centred instructional methods, abstract nature of some science concepts and resistance to employing innovative teaching strategies that will curb poor performance in science. Therefore, for Nigeria as a nation to be an active player in this technological era where students use devices that combine education with entertainment to learn, it becomes necessary to develop and validate edutainment instructional packages that can be used to tackle some concepts that students have learning difficulties especially in Biology such as ecology. The first package was developed using HTML, CSS and JavaScript Language while the second package was built with action script 3.0. The packages were developed using ADDIE model. The validation was done in three stages: content validation (biology university lecturers, secondary school biology teachers and examination bodies); expert's validation (computer programmers and educational technology experts) and field trial validation (one-on-one validation by students). The observations, comments and suggestions during the validation were used to modify the package. After the package, development and validation were found to enhance students’ performance in ecology concept.