THE EFFECTIVENESS OF REPETITION, MOTION AND SEX OF LEARNERS ON MEDIATED TEACHING OF CERTAIN CONCEPTS IN HIGH SCHOOL CHEMISTRY

Purpose. The purpose of this work was to investigate the effects of repetition type, media format, motion, sex, and order of presentation variables on students' performance and retention in relation to certain chemical concepts by presenting the same stimulus materials via three methods of instruction: lecture, film and slides to the learners. The larger purpose was to improve performance in eleventh grade subjects enrolled in the scientific streams. Research questions were generated with reference to prior research and theories of information processing such as the cumulative strength, the multiple trace, the depth of information processing, and the cueing theories.;The statistical design was a three-way partially hierarchical factorial analysis of variance. The overall analysis was conducted using the BMDO8V routine, while Scheffe's method was used to detect the sub-effects.;Findings. Major findings were: (1) There were significant main effects for repetition types (p < .05), media format (p < .01), and sex (p < .05). (2) Motion was found to have no statistically significant effect on learning certain concepts in chemistry. (3) No significant differences were found on the delayed retention test between repetition types, media format, motion, and sex variables. (4) Order of presentation had an effect on student performance that approached significance (.10). (5) There was a difference (.10) between the lecture + lecture presentation and the film + film presentation, or the slide + slide presentation, (.01) (6) The lecture + slide presentation was significantly (.05) superior to the film + slide presentation. (7) The lecture presentation (including many drawings) was significantly (.05) superior to either the film presentation or the slide presentation.;In general, these findings were discussed with reference to the previous theories of information processing, the difficulty of the subject matter, the complex film for high school learners, and their relative familiarity with the several media formats of instruction.;Methodology. Male and female eleventh grade subjects (N = 600) from two high schools in Jordan were randomly assigned to 24 treatment groups who received instruction via lecture, film, and slides with an identical repetition, varied repetition, reversed varied repetition, and no repetition strategies. The stimulus materials for the film condition were 16 mm CHEM study sound color films on reaction kinetics and catalysis. The source material for the other conditions was derived from the film content which was translated into Arabic. The three repetition treatment groups were given a 52-minute instructional session followed by a 60-item researcher-prepared and expert-validated multiple choice test; while the control group was given a 26-minute instructional session followed by the immediate test. A parallel retention test was administered one week later.;Conclusions. The following conclusions were drawn: (1) Repetition was reliably superior to no repetition. (2) Lecture presentation (where augmented with a number of drawings) had reliably greater effect on learning than either the film presentation or slide presentation. (3) Females performed significantly better than males. (4) Motion had no effect on students' performance. (5) Order of presentation had its effects on performance in favor of the lecture followed by the medium presentation.