Study on the Effectiveness of ICT Mediated Performance Based Learning Material (PBLM) on Achievement in Mathematics

Abstract

This pretest–posttest equivalent groups experimental study compared a procedure that is the ICT mediated performance based learning material(PBLM) for helping a section of ninth class students to be better able to improve the achievement in non-standardized summative assessment conducted by school than a control group of ninth class students. We predicted ICT mediated PBLM would improve the achievement and facilitate both the gender equally. A variety of mutually overlapping constructivist strategy like reciprocal teaching in flipped classroom, cognitive apprenticeship or inquiry learning or dialogue and instructional conversations or problem based learning in flipped classroom set up were used to help students learn a semester class 9 mathematics content of CBSE, India; as no single strategy would have done justice to learn such a diverse variety of content. There was at least some sort of activity designed; for example, making the objects to understand, physically measuring the quantity involved like volume, surface area with real example from surrounding; creating simple art forms to develop acquaintance with the concept; as part of their assessment students were provided with small cylinders, cubes, cuboids etc. from their daily life to calculate their volume or surface area etc.; this process of feeling mathematics probably justifies the nomenclature performance based learning mathematics; this was an attempt to make mathematical process more important than product. ICT mediation was designed to accelerate the whole process efficiently. The achievement of students in their last summative assessment conducted by school (that is achievement in class 8 annual summative assessment) was taken as pretest scores of both the groups. The mean pretest score of the control group (M = 55.5,SD = 22.1) was significantly higher than the mean pretest score of the experimental group(M =33.2, SD= 21.9). Comparing the estimated marginal means using ANCOVA showed that the more score was gained on ICT mediated treatment given to experimental group (mean=50.4) compared to conventional treatment given to control group (mean=29.4). The results indicated students in the experimental ICT mediated group (M = 39.7, SD = 24.4) scored better in posttest than did the students in the control group (M = 40, SD = 28.6). These results suggest ICT mediated interaction has significant impact on improving the achievement in mathematics. There was no significant difference on the mean test scores of girls and boys in any of the pretest and posttest; which indicated gender had no effect on achievement in mathematics at class 9 level and ICT mediated PBLM facilitated both the gender equally for improvement in achievement.