Effects of Powerpoint Presentation in the Academic Performance

Effect of PowerPoint Presentation in the Academic Achievement of the Senior Students of Madapdap Rest.

My sincere thanks also go to the staff of the PAC library for allowing me to borrow their journals and books especially in the field of statistics. I thank my fellow MAEd General Science students for their encouragement and support they have shown in doing this action research. Last but not the least; I would like to thank my family: my parents, my girl fried May Ann Tayson for the understanding during the days that I lost quality time to her in completing this laborious requirement. And above all, to our mighty God – the source of knowledge and wisdom.

ABSTRACT

In recent years, the uses of PowerPoint (a form of multimedia) presentations in classroom instruction have significantly increased globally without examination of their effects on students learning. This action research investigated the “Effects of PowerPoint Presentation in the Academic Achievement of The Senior Students In Physics”. The researcher conducted an experiment, which includes a treatment-control design, in a classroom setting within the first quarter of the year. The respondents were divided into two groups. In group A, the traditional system was used while Group B PowerPoint Presentation was utilized as the delivery system. The results show that PowerPoint presentations may improve students’ academic achievement by 4% over the use of the traditional methods of teaching More so, there is a significant difference in the use of PowerPoint Presentation over the traditional method of teaching.

INTRODUCTION

Nowadays, one of the most widespread tools that are used in computer-aided education is PowerPoint presentations which provide to transmit the course contexts visually to the students. Originally PowerPoint was developed for commercial and business purposes by Microsoft before approximately 20 years. However, it has quickly penetrated the scientific and educational circles as well. Microsoft estimates that 1. 25 million PowerPoint presentations take place every hour. In the traditional education environments, the duty of the students is to adhere to the educational activities as a passive receiver and memorize the content of the lesson. PowerPoint presentations create more powerful sensory alerts when compared with traditional education materials (blackboard, overhead projections, etc. While giving the lessons with PowerPoint presentations, the content of the lesson stays the same, but the form of transmitting the lesson to the student changes. The PowerPoint presentations which are prepared for lessons have advantages such as having strong colors, gradual building of text, a simple animation of diagrams, facilities for simple editing, and updating. Thus it can be mentioned that the PowerPoint presentations provide significant time and force savings. As the popularity of the PowerPoint presentations increases, the studies concerning the pedagogical results of the usage of this tool increase.

The advantages of giving lessons with the PowerPoint presentations could be generalized as follows in the light of the academic studies till now: PowerPoint contributes to properly forming the course content and giving lessons.  It simplifies taking notes during the lesson. Students think that following the lesson from the screen is funny and interesting, so the PowerPoint presentations positively affect students.  PowerPoint motivates the students for attendance to the lessons. PowerPoint encourages students for learning. Despite these advantages brought about by technology, still there are some teachers who are resistant to change their styles in teaching. They keep on applying the traditional method of teaching like the use of manila paper, lecture discussions, and so on. The researcher believes that there is a great impact on the academic achievement of the learners by using this form of multimedia although there has been a lack of consensus in the studies concerning “the effect of PowerPoint presentations on the student performance”. Till now, the researches about this topic reached different results. Somehow, the researcher hopes to encourage the Science teachers to put some innovations in their practice by showing the “Effect of PowerPoint presentations in the Academic Achievement of the Senior Students of Madapdap Rest. High School in Physics.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

This action research aimed to determine the “Effect of PowerPoint presentations in the Academic Achievement of the Senior Students of Madapdap Rest. High School in Physics. ” Specifically, it purports to answer the following questions:

1. Which between the two groups perform better?
2. Was there a significant difference in the use of PowerPoint presentations and the traditional method of teaching?

Hypotheses:

1. Group A (traditional method of teaching) perform better than group B(PowerPoint presentation)
2. There is no significant difference in the use of PowerPoint presentations and the traditional method of teaching. Scope and Delimitation This action research on “The Effect of PowerPoint Presentations in the Academic Achievement of the Senior Students of Madapdap Rest. High School in Physics was conducted at Madapdap Rest. High School located in Madapdap Rest. Mabalacat Pampanga. There were two hundred (200) senior high school students who were chosen respondents of this study.

LITERATURE REVIEW

The Relation of Dual Coding Theory and PowerPoint The theoretical framework of the effect of education technology tools, which have high visual effects like PowerPoint, on learning is “Dual Coding Theory” generated by Allan Paivio in 1986. Dual Coding Theory is based on the assumption that the same information coding (presenting) in two different but supporting each other forms enhances efficiency in learning. Paivio began his studies concerning Dual Coding Theory in the learning process in the 1960s and the theory was developed in 1986. After the 1980s, the significance of the theory was increased by the development of education technology practices. Paivio’s Dual Coding Theory could theoretically explain the effect of PowerPoint in learning when it is thought with the information coding theory.

According to the information coding theory, the process of learning is as follows: Information is received from external sources by senses; It transforms into specific forms by electing in the sensory register; It is coded in short-term memory; The information in the long term memory goes back to the short term memory and integrates with the new information, becomes coded with this method and has a new meaning; The coded information storages in the long term memory. According to several types of research concerning Dual Coding Theory, individuals learn more effectively with the combination of verbal and visual information. Presentation of information to the students by education technologies that evoke the non-verbal systems such as PowerPoint presentations contributes to the process of transmitting the information to short term memory from sensory registers and then to long term memory after coding them. Through the usage of PowerPoint, during the lessons, the words or the concepts that should be emphasized could be also visually presented, and the attractiveness of the information increases. A study by Luna and McKenzie (2001) indicates that both faculty and students think multimedia presentations enhance learning.

However, test results showed no difference between multimedia and traditional lecture formats. On Student Performance In Principles Of Economics: An Exploratory Study shows that the results indicate that multimedia presentations can improve test scores significantly. Additionally, students who are above-average academic performers receive more benefit from multimedia presentations than students of below-average academic performance. One study that has examined the relationship between multimedia and student learning and attitudes was conducted by Butler and Mautz (2003). In a laboratory experiment conducted during a 30-minute time period, they found that multimedia did not affect student recall in all situations. Beutler and Mautz did find an interaction between the effects of the multimedia presentation and the student’s preferred class representation style (i. e. , whether the student was considered a “verbal” or “imaginal” learner). Effect of PowerPoint presentations on student learning.

The evidence that PowerPoint presentations influence learning is largely anecdotal. Bryantand Hunton (2000)states that the degree of improved learning is a function of a complex set of interactions among learner and medium attributes. Mason and Hlynka (2001) state that PowerPoint helps structure the content and processing of a lesson or lecture. Aiding note-taking (and thus facilitating study) is another purported advantage of using PowerPoint. Parks (2005) report that students liked the lecture outline and graphs on the screen and that the PowerPoint presentation had a positive influence on students. Harrison (2006) argues that PowerPoint enhances instruction and motivates students to learn. If this is true, the bigger question is, does PowerPoint help students learn? PowerPoint presentations incorporate graphics, animation, and color (imagery). Human information processing theories focus on how the human memory system gathers, transforms, compacts, elaborates, encodes, retrieves, and uses information. Sensory registers, short-term memory, and long-term memory are the three major storage structures of the human brain.

Research has shown that attention plays an important role in determining when and how information is further processed from sensory registers to short and long-term memory. If information is not attended to, it is quickly lost in the sensory stimulus stage of processing. Reynolds and Baker (2000) find that presenting materials on a computer increased attention and learning, and learning increased as attention increased. Human information processing theories can shed light on how PowerPoint features (graphics, animations, etc. ) may influence learning. The information encoded at a representational level generates a short term memory trace, while information encoded at the referential level elicits both referentially-related verbal and nonverbal memory traces of a longer-term nature. Associatively encoded information results in memory traces that include information about multiple verbal or Nonverbal items. It is a referential encoding that is most relevant for this study. The graphical nature of the PowerPoint presentation arouses students’ imagery systems, which become more activated when information (e. . , instructional materials) is presented in non-verbal forms. PowerPoint presentations should arouse the imagery system and could contribute to comprehension, and improve short and long-term memory. Since, in a PowerPoint presentation, topics are presented in a hierarchical fashion with graphics, color, and animation, students could “use a mental image of that outline to study, to retrieve the information on a test, to organize their answer for an essay question, and to perform other educational tasks.

Rose (2001) also notes that the presentation of learning materials in graphical form is beneficial for students. Interaction between Learners’ Preferred Representation Styles and PowerPoint Presentation Cognitive theory suggests that learning is optimized when learners’ preferred representation styles are congruent with the attributes of educational technology. While offering guidelines for educators in using technology for instruction, Bryant and Hunton (2000) suggest that individual characteristics (cognitive differences) be taken into account in instructional design. Dual coding theory suggests that learners have preferred representation styles. Some individuals learn and recall well from visually presented information while others learn and recall well from the verbally presented information. Kozma (1994) submits that to understand the relationship between media and learning, we need to consider the interaction between the attributes of the medium and the cognitive processes of students.

METHODOLOGY

This study attempted to determine the “Effect of PowerPoint Presentations in the Academic Achievement of the Senior Students of Madapdap Rest. High School in Physics. This action research was experimental in nature. The researcher selected among the 4th year students of Madapdap Rest. High School via draw lottery and were chosen as the respondents of this study. The respondents were divided into groups A and B and used as control and experimental groups respectively. The presentation for group A (control group) was supported by traditional, text-based, black-and-white, visual aids while the presentations for Group B (experimental group) were supported by PowerPoint, which provided colorful visual aids with graphics and animation. Two different teachers were used for this research study with the use of the same modules in Physics. Table 1. shows the summary of the modules including the lessons and the time frame that was utilized in this study. Teacher A used the traditional method of teaching in presenting his lessons while Teacher B utilized PowerPoint presentations in demonstrating his unit of instructions. At the end of the 1st quarter, the respondents were evaluated their academic performance based on the modules presented. Each group was given identical tests on the same date in the form of standardized test from the Division Office made by supervisor. This test was parallel with the modules that were presented as stated in the course description.

Students’ performance was measured based on their examination scores. After administering the test, the scores were tabulated, analyzed, and interpreted. The researcher computed the mean and proficiency level of the students to assess which one performs better in the standardized test and to determine the significant difference between the two groups, a t-test was applied for independent samples. On the basis of the standardized test administered to two different groups, the mean and proficiency level increased by 4% with the use of PowerPoint presentations. This result implies that educational technology such as PowerPoint Presentation improves academic achievement. In addition, the results suggest that PowerPoint presentations may enhance short-term memory depending on the topic under discussion. There is a significant difference in the use of PowerPoint presentations over the use of the tradition method of teaching. However, the conclusions and findings of the researcher are subject to several limitations. First, a significant limitation is the internal validity of the study.

The experiment was conducted in the first quarter of the year, and as a result, other factors beyond the control of the experimenter may have affected the results. Second, two different teachers taught for the control and experimental group. This raises the possibility of the teacher on how he delivers the subject matter compared to other teachers. Third, the results should be applied cautiously to other settings since the demographics of students in this study may differ from students in other institutions. Fourth, the findings also may have been affected by the way PowerPoint slides were constructed and organized. That is, poor PowerPoint slides could affect learning and satisfaction. This study used the PowerPoint slides that came with the textbook. Future research can examine whether different types of PowerPoint slides (poorly-designed vs. well- designed) affect students’ learning. Finally, the results of this study must be interpreted cautiously; more research would be required to establish stronger claims as to the effect of PowerPoint Presentations on academic achievement. On the part of the Admin Staff and PTA officers should support this kind of innovation by providing at least a television set in each classroom to make the instructions easy. Give pieces of training and workshops for the teachers who can’t cope up with these modern technologies. “Change starts within change itself. ”

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