Enhancing the conceptual comprehension of astronomy for grade seventh students using multimedia

Abstract

This study was motivated by the absence of studies examining the effectiveness and students' perceptions toward multimedia in learning concepts in astronomy related to the Bhutanese context. The study used an explanatory sequential mixed-method research approach with a pre-test and post-test experiment on a single group. The study examined the effectiveness of multimedia in learning astronomy concepts. Additionally, it also explored the perceptions of students toward the use of multimedia in learning astronomy concepts. The participants consist of 44-grade seventh students. The quantitative data was collected using an astronomy conceptual test. The qualitative data were collected from semi-structured interviews conducted with 12 students. Quantitative data was analyzed employing histograms and paired samples t-tests. To generate themes for the qualitative data, Braun and Clarke's thematic analysis was used in the study. The semi-structured interview data were analyzed to get the students' perceptions of multimedia. The quantitative result indicated that after the multimedia intervention, the performance on the astronomy conceptual test significantly improved. Moreover, students' perceptions were positive towards multimedia. However, students face certain challenges such as time constraints and being unable to discern appropriate information for astronomy concepts. It was recommended that multimedia could be used to learn concepts in astronomy.