Effect of multimodal instructional approach on students academic performance in the concept of biological classification

Abstract

The study investigated the effect of Multimodal Instructional Approach on students’ academic performance in the concept of Biological Classification at Navrongo Senior High School. The research study adopted quasi-experimental research design. The sample comprised of 100 Navrongo Senior High School form two Gold Track and Green Track science students. The students were divided into two groups and were assigned as experimental group and control group. Students from the Gold Track were assigned as experimental group and those from Green Track were also assigned as control group. Each group was made up of 25 males and 25 females. Pretest was administered to all the participants in order to be sure of their homogeneity. Treatment was administered to the experimental group using Multimodal Instructional Approach and the control group was also taught using Discussion as a teaching method. After the treatment, a posttest was administered to both groups to determine the effectiveness of the treatment. The pretest and posttest scores of the students in both groups were used for the purpose of data analysis. The results were analyzed using t-test. The results of the posttest revealed that the use of Multimodal Instructional Approach in teaching the concept of Biological Classification was effective. When the results of the two methods were compared, multimodal instructional approach was more effective than the discussion method. The posttest results of the experimental group were significantly higher than the control group. Questionnaire was also administered to students in the experimental group to determine their perceptions about multimodal instructional approach. The overall mean of the participant was 4.25 which proved that majority of the students agreed that Multimodal Instructional Approach is an effective method for teaching Biological Classification. It was therefore recommended that science teachers should adopt multimodal instructional approach in teaching practical-oriented topics like classification of living organisms. It was also recommended that science teachers should be given the opportunity to attend in service training, workshops, seminars and conferences to update their knowledge of methods of teaching concepts in science.