Effect of the Use of Information and Communication Technologies ICT Resources on the Scholastic Performance of Middle School Students in Biology and Geology Courses

Abstract

The performance in Mathematics and Sciences of a large proportion of Moroccan students in middle and high schools has been ranked recently below expectations. The Center of Information Technology Innovation (CITI) for human development at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane (AUI) is investigating how IT-based education could improve both motivation and performance of students in middle and high schools. To demonstrate the positive effect of these ICT resources on the scholastic performance of middle school students, CITI experimented the project in two pilot middle schools. The two schools belong to two different socio-economics environments; one is located in Ifrane (small city) and the other in Fez (large city). In each school, two groups, of 20 students each, have been selected randomly at the beginning of the academic year for the three middle school levels. For each level, one of the groups is the experimental group and the other is the control group. In each the three levels in each middle school, both groups were taught the Biology and Geology course by the same teacher.For each academic level, we developed electronic content matching the intended learning objectives of the Biology and Geology course to be taught using information and communication technologies to the experimental groups in both cities. The control groups in each level learn the same course material from the same instructor using the traditional (non ICT) means. It should be noted that each middle has been equipped with an ICT enabled classroom where experimental groups where taught the Biology and Geology course. For each level, both groups were evaluated using the same tests.Having designed and run the experiment described above for one semester, we conducted statistical analysis to compare the performance of the experimental and control groups for each level in each middle school. The analysis revealed that the experimental group outperformed the control group for the three levels in the Fez middle school with a 85% confidence. In Ifrane middle school, the performance of the experimental group was superior for the third level but was found to be similar to the control group for the first and second levels with the same confidence level.