The effect of technology integration on college of education students’ achievement in quadratic equations: The perspective of photo math utilization

Abstract

The study examined the usefulness of photo math app utilization in the teaching and learning of quadratic equations, the impact of photo math app usage on college of education students who were taught with photo math apps and those taught without photo math apps, and students’ perceived challenges of using photo math apps in learning quadratic equations. The research paradigm was positivist with a quantitative approach and had survey and quasi-experimental as designs. A multi-staged sampling technique was used to select 200 respondents who were all first-year students from Berekum College of Education to participate in the study. Descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were performed using the statistical package for the social sciences package to examine the pre- and post-intervention data. Results revealed a significant increase in the usefulness of the photo math app in the teaching and learning of quadratic equations. The mean score on the impact of photo math app usage on college education students increased significantly from the pre-test to the post-test. The results of the t-tests further confirmed the effectiveness of photo math in enhancing students’ achievement in mathematics, as it yielded a very high eta square statistic value. The findings of the study also revealed that there were some challenges with the usage of photo math technology. The study recommended that mathematics tutors at Berekum College of Education and other colleges of education incorporate mathematical apps and technological tools into their mathematics lessons in order to build the confidence and interest levels of their students and make their lessons very practical to improve their performance.