The effect of human figure drawing training supported with smart board supported education on 7th grade secondary school students' success and retention

The aim of this study was to determine how much the students could improve their human figure drawings through smart board-supported art training and the effect of this training on their success and retention. Pre-test, Post-test, and Retention test design and control groups were used in the research. The research sample consisted of 7th grade students from Alipaşa Secondary School, located in Sur central district of Diyarbakır province in the 2017-2018 academic year. 3 groups, including 1 Control and 2 Experimental groups, were selected randomly. The research lasted for 8 weeks. Teacher-centered instruction methods, which was supported by the Ministry of National Education (MNE), was applied in the control group, and the smart board-supported training was applied in the Experiment-1 group. Both the smart board-supported training and demonstration method were applied in the Experiment-2 group. The classes were taught by the researcher in all 3 groups. "Human Figure Drawings Evaluation Criteria Scale," developed by Koppitz, was used as the data collection tool in the research. To test subproblems of the research; pretest, posttest, and retention tests were applied to the student's works. Before the empirical process, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was applied over the obtained pretest scores to determine if the groups were equal in terms of human figure drawing skills. It was determined that there were no significant differences between the pretest scores of the groups. For the analysis of the data obtained in the research, paired sample t-test was used to calculate the difference between the pretest-posttest scores of the Control, Experiment-1, and Experiment-2 groups. When effect values of the application were analyzed, it was seen that the greatest difference between the pretest and posttest scores was in the Experiment-1 group with a value of 8.12; the Experiment-2 group had the second highest difference with a value of 6.25; finally, the Control group had the lowest difference with a value of 4.51. However, in all the groups Eta-squared values were above 14, this means that all three methods had a great impact on improving children's human figure drawing skills. One-Way Analysis of Variance was applied in comparing the posttest scores among groups. As a result of the application, it was determined that there was a significant difference between the Control group and the Experiment-1 group, the latter being more successful. The differences between the Control and Experiment-2 groups, and between the Experiment-1 and Experiment-2 groups were not found statistically significant. Based on this result, teaching with a smart board can be said to be more effective when compared to the teaching method that the MNE supports. After the empirical process, retention test scores of the Control, Experiment-1, and Experiment-2 groups were compared, and no significant difference was found. Accordingly, it can be stated that the Control, Experiment-1, and Experiment-2 groups had a similar effect in terms of retention of what was learned in regards to human figure drawing. Consequently, smart board supported teaching is more effective for teaching human figure drawing skills than both the MNE supported teaching methods and the smart board supported teaching and demonstration methods combined. Keywords: Art, Art Education, Figure, Human Figure Drawing, Child's Artistic Development, Smart Board, Computer Assisted Education