The effect of project based learning and game based learning activities to the achievement, attitude and motivation

It is a well known fact that students qualify Science lessons as very difficult. The main factors for this attitude are their misconceptions during childhood and wrong ideas obtained from their surroundings. Finally they get a negative attitude and develop an aversion to these kind of lessons.Science lessons seen equal to just making experiment have been an expeiment lesson for years with "all that was at hand" resources due to ill provided materials. Science lessons have become more or less experimental themselves. The Science and Technology Programme, as well as the new methods and techniques applied in activities for both students and teaching staff, that started to be used in 2004, are still present in the Science Education Programme of 2013. Along with specific coaching of scholars for the sake of Science education, in course of time several efforts have been made aiming to make the lessons more interesting for students. Relevant professional literature shows that the Project Based Learning activities and the brand-new Game Based Learning activities, that are increasingly being applied, are two important and repeatedly effective tools in many aspects. This study aims to demonstrate the academic achievements of the Project Based Learning and the Game Based Learning activities developed for Material and Temprature Unit at Science lessons at 6th form Secondary School, the attittude towards Science and Technology Education and the impact they have on motivating students to study Science. In order to put this into practice two test groups and one control group were created and quasi-experiment method was used. Test group 1 got Game Based Learning activities, test group 2 Project Based Learning activities and the control group the school's usual curriculum activities. In test group 1 and 2 respectively 17 and 19 students participated, while the control group consisted of 16 students. For the purpose of data collection during research following tools were used: the student's personal information form developed to state demographic charasteristics by the researcher, the academic achievement test by Celik (2010), the Science and Technology Attitude Standard by Ince (2007) and the Motivation Standard for Learning Science by Dede and Yaman (2008) as preliminary and final test. All data were analysed using the SPSS Statistics Programme. The findings of the study shows that Project Based Learning and Game Based Learning activities improve academic achievements and definitively do not make a significant difference with respect to attitudes towards Science education and the motivation to learn Science. In this study, when adequately planned and applied during education process, Game Based Learning activities have been as effective as Project Based Learning activities. In addition, it can be said that Game Based Learning activities in particular are far more useful to increase Science learning motivation. Therefore it is recommended that will support the use of Game Based Learning activities in Science Education and that will lead to the development of good examples that can be shared and disseminated.