Google Earth and the Academic Achievement of Geography Students in Lapai, Niger State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study was on Impacts of Google Earth and the Academic Achievement of Geography Students in Lapai, Niger State, Nigeria. Quasi-experimental design, specifically Pretest, Posttest, non-equivalent, control group design was adopted for the study. One hundred and eighty-one (181) students were sampled for the study from eight (3) purposively sampled secondary schools was used. The experimental and the control groups consisted of 70 and 111 students respectively. Two research questions were raised and answered and two null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Experts in the field of Science Education and Educational Technology, validated the two research instruments used for the study. The reliability coefficient of Geography Achievement Test (GAT) was 0.86 using PPMC. The hypotheses were tested using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) with the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) 23.00 version. The result of the study revealed that the students exposed to the Google Earth map software performed significantly better than those taught using the conventional lecture method. Based on the findings from the study it was recommended that Google Earth map as an instructional aid be encouraged for teaching Geography our respective secondary schools in order to enhance effective teaching and learning of Geography at Senior secondary school level