The effect of electronic educational media on academic progress and academic self-efficacy in geometry

In recent years, the use of technology and educational media in education has been one of the focus of studies. These media both improve the accuracy of the operation and increase the speed of learning and transfer of concepts. Considering the graphic and spatial nature of the content of the geometry course and the problems related to accurate and correct drawing and visualization of shapes, it seems necessary to use new methods and tools in education. The aim of this study was to evaluate and compare the effectiveness of teaching the geometry lesson with electronic educational media methods (teaching with dynamic and static graphic images) and teaching in the traditional way , on the academic progress and geometrical academic self-efficacy of the students.

According to the nature of the work, the research method was quasi-experimental. To conduct the research, a pretest-posttest with a control group design was used. The statistical population of this study included all male students in the tenth grade of mathematics in a District 1 of Tabriz in the academic year 2020-2021. The statistical sample consisted of 79 male students in the tenth grade of mathematics, including 3 classes, which were selected by availability sampling method and were randomly divided into three class groups. There were 26 people in the teaching group using dynamic graphic images electronic media class group, 26 people in the teaching group using static graphic images electronic media class group, and 27 people in the traditional teaching class group. The intervention tool of this research included the software for electronic teaching dynamic graphic images (Geo Gebra) and a set of educational slides designed by the researchers for teaching static graphic images. The study groups were trained for 6 weeks, 1 session per week and 90 minutes per session. In order to collect data related to academic progress, all three groups before and after the intervention, were assessed by using two parallel tests made by the researchers, including 14 questions, in the form of open-ended questions (explanatory) about the concepts of drawing and geometric reasoning from the geometry book of the 10th grade of the mathematics field. The first test was used as a pre-test and the second test was used as a post-test. Also, the participants answered the math self-efficacy questionnaire before and after the training. The data obtained from the pre-test and post-test stages were analyzed using one-way covariance analysis (ANCOVA) after checking the assumptions.

The results showed that the studied teaching methods had different effects on academic progress. With regard to the academic progress, the difference between electronic educational groups (P<0.009), between electronic education group with dynamic graphic images and common education group (P<0.001) and between electronic education group with static graphic images and common education group (P<0.001) was significant. Also, the results showed that the studied teaching methods had different effects on geometry academic self-efficacy. Regarding academic self-efficacy, the difference between electronic educational groups (P<0.02), etween electronic education group with dynamic graphic images and common education group (P<0.05) and between electronic education group with istatic graphic images and common education group (P<0.001) was significant. Among the studied groups of this research, the best results of academic progress and academic self-efficacy were related to electronic education group with dynamic graphic images.

The results of this study showed that the use of teaching methods with graphic images by teachers in teaching geometry can have a positive effect on students' academic achievement and academic self-efficacy. The use of these tools can play the role of an educational facilitator in improving the students’ academic performance.