Our study compared and showed the effectiveness of the Animated Simulations and Basic GUI in teaching projectile motion to the third year students of the University of the Philippines f or the academic year 2006-2007. This study also showed the positive attitude of the students towards the the computer programs as a teaching tool for learning projectile motion. The effectiveness of the said computer programs were determined based on the students performance level in Basic Physics’ concept of projectile motion before and after they were exposed to the said programs, the attitude of the students towards the two computer programs was also used in determining the computer program’s effectiveness.
The subjects of the study were the third year Basic Physics students of the University of the Philippines, SY 2006-2007. The subjects were grouped into two based on in their sections, specifically section Bocobo and section Sison.The two groups were exposed to two different computer programs. Section Bocobo with Animated Simulation and section Sison with the Basic GUI. Using Tuckman’s technique, the subjects were match-paired according to sex and to their second year grades in Biology and Chemistry.
The following are the findings obtained fro our study:
1. Students exposed to the Animated Simulation got the pretest mean of 3.269 while students exposed to Basic GUI obtained a pretest of 2.739 meanwhile posttest mean of students exposed to Animated Simulation is 5.4348 and students exposed to Basic GUI garnered a posttest mean of 3.6957.
2. The subjects from both groups all got a significant increase in their mean scores after using the programs. The group exposed to the Animated Simulation got a mean gain of 2.1739 while the group exposed to the Basic GUI obtained a mean gain of 0.9565. Although, the Animated Simulation group obtained a higher mean gain, Ho1, which means that there is a significant difference in the mean gains of the scores of the students before and after being exposed to both teaching tools.
3. The Animated Simulation Group yielded a greater mean attitude of 3.7217 than the Basic GUI Group, which obtained a mean attitude of 3.5087. Although, both programs yielded different mean attitudes, students showed the same qualitative description, which is positive.
4. There was a significant difference in the comparison of the mean gains for both of the groups. Ho2 was rejected which means that students exposed to the Animated Simulation performed better than those exposed to Basic GUI in terms of achievement.
Since there was no significant difference in the comparison of attitudes for both groups, Ho3 was accepted.showed that both computer programs were effective in teaching projectile motion. Consequently, it presented that Animated Simulations was more effective. The study also showed that the subjects find the two computer programs helpful in their understanding towards projectile motion.
Our study showed that both of the computer programs were appealing to our subjects. However,Animated Simulation was found to be more effective.
