Effects of social studies course designed in accordance with the multimedia learning principles on student motivation, achievement and attitudes

This study aims at analysing the effects of the multimedia based fifth grade social studies course on student motivation, academic achievement and student attitudes. It is also aimed at identifying the student views about the effects of the multimedia based fifth grade social studies course on student motivation, academic achievement and student attitudes. The study was designed as an exploratory rank study, which is part of eclectic methods. The data of the study were collected using five data collection tools. The first one was a personal information form. The next one was an achievement test on the unit of Let's Know our Region which was developed by the authors. In order to analyse student attitudes towards the social studies course the Social Studies Course Attitudes Scale developed by Demir & Akengin (2010) was employed. The Social Studies Course Motivation scale developed by Kan (2012) was used to identify the student motivation. The views of the students concerning the multimedia based social studies course were analysed through interview forms which were developed by the authors. Both quantitative and qualitative data collected were analysed following their transmission to digitial environment. If the quantitative data had a normal distribution parametric tests were used. If not, nonparametric tests were employed. The qualitative data were examined using the content analysis. Major findings of the study can be summarized as follows: the multimedia based social studies course was found to have positive effects on student achievement. However, there was no significant difference between experiment and control groups in terms of academic achievement. The multimedia based social studies course was found not to have significantly positive effects on student attitudes and student motivation. On the other hand, the qualitative findings suggest that the multimedia based social studies course made the learning of topics much easier and made the abstract information concrete one. It was also found that the course made the learning environment much fun and had desired effects on student attitudes and student motivation. It also encouraged active student participation. It was also identified that the crowded classrooms seriously limited the effects of the multimedia based presentations, methods and techniques. These findings are all discussed in detail. Based on this discussion several suggestions are developed.