LEARNING O’LEVEL CHEMISTRY THROUGH DIGITAL GAMES AND MULTIMEDIA- ITS IMPACT ON LEARNERS’ ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE AND ENGAGEMENT

The Ministry of Education and Human Resources of the Republic of Mauritius seeks to broaden the scope of science subjects at all levels of the education system in view to reverse the trend of students shying away from Science and Technology subjects. The situation in Mauritius is that there is a decline in interest for sciences at upper secondary level. In view of enhancing the teaching and learning of Sciences at Secondary level, the Government has provided each laboratory in the State Schools with Data Loggers, laptops and LCD projectors. Tablets are being provided to teachers and students at upper secondary level. The availability of such tools has to some extent encouraged science educators to reflect on their practices and to explore new ways to use technology so as to engage and motivate their students.

This paper presents a study carried out with O-Level students from a State Secondary School in Mauritius, considered as a below average boy’s school as far as academic performance is concerned. The study is aimed at determining how the application of ‘digital games’ versus ‘conventional multimedia’ approaches to the teaching and learning of Organic Chemistry will impact on student’s performance and motivation.

Two groups of students were identified namely:
(1) a Control group which were exposed to a conventional multimedia environment in the form of a web site consisting of videos, flash animations and graphics mainly as a support to the teaching and learning of Chemistry
(2) an Experimental group which accessed the same multimedia elements as well as played an off the shelf digital game online named ‘OIL STRIKE’.

The paper provides an overview of the multimedia environment and the digital game used in the context of the study. It further discusses the performance of the students which was assessed through traditional written tests whilst factors such as motivation, attitudes and perception towards the teaching approaches were analyzed through questionnaires, interviews and observations.

In terms of academic performance, no significant improvement was noted following the post-test of the control and experimental group. The study revealed that though students showed positive reactions and welcomed the novel nature of this learning method, they still felt that it would not help them to answer examination questions.