Effect of the instruction software designed with instruction activities model by Gagne on academic achievement and attitudes of students in social studies course

In the present study, the effect of instruction software that was designed based on the model of instruction activities by Gagné on academic achievement and attitudes of the students in social studies class. Quasi-experimental design with pretest and posttest and control group was used in the study. The study was conducted with seventh grade students attending Esra Zafer Eşref Yıldırım middle school in Elazığ province, central township during 2015-2016 academic year. Twenty five multiple choice questions on the living democracy unit in the textbook and social studies course attitude scale developed by Beşir and Akengin (2010) were used as data collection tools in the present study. Living democracy unit content was instructed using the instruction software, which was based on instruction activities model by Gagne to the students in the study group and the same unit was instructed using present methods to the students in the control group. Prior to the study, an achievement test related to the living democracy unit in the social studies curriculum and the attitude scale were applied to both groups as a pretest and after the study, posttest versions of the same data collection tools were given to both groups, and the study was finalized. SPSS 21 statistical software was used in data analysis in the present study. Data were assessed with descriptive statistics and MANCOVA analysis. Study findings demonstrated that there was no statistically significant difference between the total attitude scores of the groups, while there were statistically significant differences between the experiment group where the instruction software that was prepared with Gagné's instruction activities model was utilized in instruction and the control group where conventional instruction methods were used [F (1.52) = 35.272 p= .012]. MANCOVA analysis demonstrated that there was a significant difference between the groups. Thus, as a result of the ANCOVA conducted to observe which groups demonstrated the significant difference, it was observed that the corrected average score for the study group increased from 19.69 to 20.46 and the corrected average score for the control group decreased from 19.40 to 18.74. This finding demonstrated that the instruction software designed with Gagne's instruction activities model increased the achievement of the students in the study group. As a result, while the instruction software designed with Gagne's instruction activities model contributed to the increase in student achievement in social studies course living democracy unit, it had no statistical impact on the attitudes of the students towards the course. Key words: Gagne, instruction activities model, instructional software, social studies.