The effects of online concept teaching material integrated teaching methods on achievement, retention and motivation: Embedded mixed design

Covid-19 pandemic causing interruption of education by threatening human health has shown again integrating education with technology is quite important and necessary. ONACOM, which has been shown by many studies in the literature to meet this need, is a concept mapping tool as well as an online concept teaching material. The aim of this study is to examine the effect of ONACOM, which is integrated with methods based on different teaching approaches (inquiry and expository), on the academic achievement, retention and motivation of fourth grade students in the Science course "Simple Electric Circuits" unit. The design of the research is an embedded experimental mixed design. A quasi-experimental design with three group (Control, Experiment1, Experiment2) and time-dependent repeated measurements (pre-test, post-test, retention test) was used in quantitative dimension and a multiple case study was used in qualitative dimension of the study. For three weeks, students were taught in Experiment2 group with the ONACOM integrated 5E model, in Experiment1 group with ONACOM integrated expository method, in Control group with the methods emphasized in the curriculum. Quantitative data were collected by academic achievement test and were analyzed by repeated measures ANCOVA. Primary qualitative data were obtained through observation by video recording in classrooms. While collecting supporting qualitative data, observation checklists and semi-structured interview forms were used as data collection tools. The qualitative data obtained were analyzed by descriptive analysis method. The findings show that there is a significant difference in favor of the Experimental2 group in terms of time-dependent measured academic achievement compared to the Control group. As a result, it can be said that ONACOM-integrated teaching methods significantly increase the academic achievement of fourth grade students in the unit of "simple electrical circuits", positively affect the retention and motivate them to the learning. The results were supported by the findings obtained from the observation checklists and field notes and by the opinions of the students.