The impact of concept teaching designed according to component display theory in web environment on the students? academic achievement, retention, and attitudes

The main purpose of this study was to examine the impact of concept teaching that was designed according to Component Display Theory (CDT) in web environment on the students? academic achievement, retention, and attitudes.Pretest-posttest experimental design was used in the study. The sophomore students who registered for the Introduction to Programming course in the Fall semester of the 2008?2009 academic year in the Department of Office Management Teacher Education in The Faculty of Commerce and Tourism Education, Gazi University constituted the participants of the study. 74 students who regularly attended the course participated in the study group and they were assigned into treatment and control groups randomly and equally. The experimental study was carried out in a four-week program in which these students were involved.Data regarding dependent variables were collected through achievement test and attitude scales. In data analysis, frequencies, percentages, means, and standard deviations were calculated and for group comparisons, t-test and ANCOVA were used.According to the study findings, in terms of academic achievement, at the beginning there was not a significant difference between groups but at the end of the treatment, there was a significant difference in favor of treatment groups. Likewise, concerning retention, students in the treatment groups showed better progress. Moreover, the attitudes of the students in the treatment group toward web-based instruction (WBI) significantly differed from those of the students in the control group. In conclusion, it was revealed that the impact of the instruction based on CDT in web environment on the students achievement, retention and attitudes was affirmative.