Assessing the Effectiveness of Padlet Instructional Tool in the Teaching and Learning of some Ecological Concepts

Abstract

The study investigated padlet instructional (PLI) tool as an activator of students’ performance in some ecological concepts in some selected Senior High Schools in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana. The Quasi-experimental design was adopted for the study. A sample size of 102 was purposively sampled from the accessible population. Biology Concept Achievement Test (BCAT) was used for data collection. Data obtained from the study were subjected to both descriptive and inferential analysis. The mean, standard deviation, box plot, mean plot, eta squared effect size, one-way ANOVA, two-way ANOVA and Post-Hoc Tukey HSD were calculated using SPSS version 21. It was established that students in PLI-1 who were taught in the school ICT laboratory and PLI-2 who were taught at home during COVID-19 vacation using the padlet tool instructional approach statistically outperformed their counterparts taught with conventional lecture-based instructional approach in terms of their academic performance (mean scores) ( p ˂ .05). However, the paired comparison PLI-1 and PLI-2 showed no statistically significant difference between the two instructional groups in terms of their academic performance (Md = 1.84, p-value = .442 > .05) (mean scores). One of the reasons for this result, might be because the use of the tool was a novel, and far more productive than the use of the conventional lecture-based instructional approach in the teaching and learning of ecological concepts. It could be deduced that the tool allowed the teachers to engage the students in an interactive virtual session, where they instantly submitted, and shared completed class task and group assignments. The study again, revealed that the interaction effect of the instructional approach and gender was not statistically significant as evidenced in the p-value > .05 [F(2, 94) = .113, p = .893).