Comparing the effects of analogy-based and animation based instructional approaches on the cognitive achievement of senior high school students in deoxyribonucleic acid concepts

Abstract

The principal focus of the study was to investigate the comparative effect of the extent to which analogy-based and animation-based instructional approaches influence senior high school students’ cognitive achievement (academic performance and retention) in biological molecular concepts especially in deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) structure and replication, transcription and translation concepts. Four research questions with two hypotheses guided the study and tested at 0.05 level of significance. A quasi-experimental design was used. A sample of seventy nine (79) second year Senior High School biology students were purposively sampled and used from two schools (Boakye Tromo Senior High/Technical School and Yamfo Anglican Senior High School) out of an estimated population of One Thousand and Fifty Eight (1058) biology studentsin the Tano North Municipal. DNA Concept Achievement Test (DNACAT) with a reliability coefficient of 0.88 was used to measure students’ achievement and retention before and after treatments. Data obtained were analysed using various statistics including mean, standard deviation, Wilcoxon signed rank test, Mann Whitney test, paired sampled t-test, independent sampled t-test, Cohen d effect size and one way ANCOVA at a significant level of 0.05. Pictorially, box plots were used to present the data. The study indicated that both analogy-based and animation-based instructional approaches significantly improved the students’ academic performance compared to the convectional lecture-based instructional approach. However, the study showed that the students taught with analogy-based instructional approach outperformed their counterparts who were taught with animation-based instructional approach especially in the application concepts/questions. Again, there was a significant difference in the retention of the concepts between the two instructional groups in favour of the analogy-based instructional group. Based on these findings, educational implications as well as recommendations and suggestions for further studies were made