STUDENTS’ PRIOR KNOWLEDGE OF INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES, INTEREST AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN COMPUTER STUDIES AMONG SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN IMO STATE

Abstract

This study investigated on the effect of students’ prior knowledge of instructional objectives, interest and academic achievement in Computer Studies. It adopted the quasi-experimental research design and used 96 students as the sample size. The instruments for data collection were Computer Studies Achievement Test (CSAT) and Computer Studies Interest Scale (CSIS), which had reliability index of 0.71 and 0.75 respectively. Data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviation for the research questions, while t-test and ANCOVA were used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Results of data analysis showed that there was a significant difference between the mean achievement scores of Computer Studies Students with prior knowledge and those without prior knowledge of the instructional objectives; as those with had prior knowledge achieved higher. Thus, the researchers recommended among other things that Computer Studies teachers should state and explain the instructional objectives of every lesson to the students before delivering the actual lesson content(s).