Improving students' concepts and confidence level in learning photosynthesis through 3-minute micro-lectures

• Main Author: Francisco, Leonardo M, Jr.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2021
• Subjects: Instructional films; Biology > Study and teaching; Photosynthesis; Distance education; Biology
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etdm_scied/2; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=etdm_scied
• Institution: De La Salle University

The shift to online distance learning due to the pandemic presented a challenge to develop learning materials that could compensate for the limitations of the learning modality. Micro-lectures are short instructor-made videos that meant to deliver lessons in ways that do not overwhelm the learners’ working memory in processing information. This action research, using a Quasi-experimental mixed method approach, implemented the use of micro-lectures in teaching photosynthesis to an intact group of sixty grade-12-STEM students to see its effect on their concepts and confidence levels in answering the concept tests. The instruments used were pre-test and post-test with confidence ratings and survey forms. The results showed that watching micro-lectures had a positive effect on students’ test performance resulting to medium gain based on Hake’s classification. There was also significant difference between pre-test and post-test scores based on paired t-test. Confidence increased for majority of the participants in pre-test vs post-test with significant difference as implied by the results of Wilcoxon Signed- Rank test. In investigating the relationship between confidence ratings and test score, the use of Spearman’s rank order showed that there was no correlation between pre-test scores and its confidence ratings, while there was weak correlation between post-test scores and its confidence ratings. This was further analyzed by determining the bias scores in the post-test which revealed overconfidence and underconfidence among students. The data from survey, journal entries, and FGD indicated that students view micro-lectures as an effective learning material that declutter the lessons for better understanding and its segmentation encouraged a more fragmented and flexible way of learning. Moreover, the researcher’s account of the development of micro-lectures proved that there are no limitations to making and sharing instructional videos since the common multimedia devices are sufficient, and the constraint to its wide adoption is familiarization.