The effects of teaching biology concepts with interactive animated video in secondary school

The expository methods of teaching biology have become obsolete with advancements in information and communication technology (ICT) and the learning needs of digital natives. The role of a teacher has become more of a facilitator rather than a sage on the stage. The integration of interactive animated video (IAV) in biology education can be a paradigm shift from teacher-centered methods of teaching and learning biology to student-centered teaching and learning processes. IAV containing text, animation, voice-over narration and interactivities makes the abstract and dynamic biology concepts more realistic, comprehensible, interesting and motivating through both the audio and visual inputs. This study explored the effects of teaching biology concepts with IAV on students’ cognitive domain of conceptual understanding and affective domains of motivation, interest and lesson satisfaction in one of the secondary schools in Samtse, Bhutan. The participants were taught the concepts of diffusions, osmosis and transpiration using IAVs. Both descriptive and inferential data analysis in SPSS revealed that the IAV increased the motivation, interest, lesson satisfaction and conceptual understanding of biology students significantly. The descriptive statistics indicated an increase in cognitive and affective learning domains of the participants from high to very high levels. The inferential statistics of paired-sample t-tests and eta squared statistics indicated positive effects of IAV on their learning domains at p<0.00 (2-tailed test). The IAV is the multimedia tool that elevated the conceptual understanding, motivation, interest and lesson satisfaction of secondary biology students.