A Comparison of Traditional Method and Computer Aided Instruction on Students Achievement in Educational Research

Student learning is the focus of teaching learning process. Theorists and practitioners have always been made concerted efforts to facilitate students learning by enhancing the quality of learning experiences. Emergence of learning theories over time reflects the concern of educators to explore process, factors and conditions involved in human learning. Application of predominant learning theories have always been changing and modifying the methods of teaching and learning. This study examined the effect of computer aided instruction on student achievement in educational research course as compared to traditional method of instruction. An experiment was conducted with the students of three different programs of session 2009-2010 studying at Islamic University of Technology (IUT). The study was conducted using posttest only equivalent group design with matched groups based on grade point average of the winter semester of the academic year 2009-2010. Perfectly matched fourteen pairs of students were selected and assigned randomly to the experimental and the control groups. Students of the experimental group received computer aided instruction, for a period of eight weeks in the form of presentation and tutorials and the control group was taught through the traditional method of instruction. Two null hypotheses were tested by analyzing the data on achievement test. The results revealed that the experimental group outperformed the control group and there was no significant difference in the overall mean achievement scores of the three subgroups of the experimental group. This study was an effort to see how CAI affects the achievement of students in social sciences especially in research and statistics. The main objective of this study was to develop a well structured computer aided instructional package for educational research course so that the learners both students and teachers can understand the theory and at the same time implement the theory into practice.