The effect of interactive e-book developed for sixth grade social sciences course on students' achievement

The aim of the study is to determine the principles of interactive e-book design based on the literature and expert opinions, to design an e-book in terms of these principles for 6th grade Social Sciences course, ?Our Country and the World? unit, to compare the effects of the designed e-book and the e-book designed as a sample by Ministry of National Education on students? achievement with the knowledge and comprehension level thinking skills and to determine opinions of the students about the books. Post-test control group design is used in the study. The study has been carried out on 55 students who attend 6th grade at Ulfet Baser Primary School in Nevsehir in 2012-2013 academic year. Present classes are appointed randomly as experimental and control groups. Instead of printed book, the designed e-book is used in the experimental group and the e-book designed as a sample by Ministry of National Education is used in the control group for three weeks. At the end of the period, an achievement test is held in both groups. The achievement test is prepared in accordance with the aims of the unit; the questions are checked by experts; and then two sixth grade students are made to read the questions in order to provide clarity. To determine the validity of the achievement test, it was applied to 78 seventh grade students in the same school, and item analysis, relevance and difficulty analyses are determined. Irrelevant items are removed and a 27-question test is prepared. Reliability of the test is measured as 0.94 via KR-20. During the designation process, present literature and expert opinions are taken into consideration and content and design criteria are determined. Distribution of answers to interview questions are presented as frequencies (f) and percentages (%). After the analyses, an interactive e-book is predesigned, expert opinions are considered again and after the relevant corrections the e-book is designed. For the normal curve of distribution and homogeneity of variances for the two groups, independent samples t-test is used. After the analyses, it is found out that there is no difference between the groups (p,>05) about the achievement test averages and the knowledge level questions but there is a meaningful difference favor of the experimental group about the comprehension questions between groups (p<,05). That there is no difference between the groups (p,>05) about the achievement test averages and the knowledge level questions may result from because it is the first application of such a practice for the students, which may increase the interest of them in the lesson or because the application process is too short to distinguish the difference between the effects of the designed e-book for the study and the e-book designed as a sample by Ministry of National Education on students? achievement. That there is a difference about the comprehension questions between groups may result from because present literature and expert opinions are taken into consideration for the designation of the interactive e-book for the study so that the students comprehend the content better.