EFFICACY OF EVACS AND EVOLVE COMPUTER SIMULATION MODELS ON ATTITUDE, RETENTION AND PERFORMANCE IN EVOLUTION CONCEPTS AMONG NCE STUDENTS IN NORTH WEST, NIGERIA

CHAPTER ONE

THE PROBLEM

1.1         Introduction

Biology is a natural science that deals with the living world: How the world is structured, how it functions and what these functions are, how it develops, how living things came into existence, and how they react to one another and with their environment (Umar,2011). It is a prerequisite subject for many fields of learning that contributes immensely to the technological growth of the nation (Ahmed, 2008). This includes medicines, pharmacy, nursing, agriculture, forestry, biotechnology, and many other areas (Ahmed & Abimbola, 2011). Biology plays a vital role in the economic development of the nation. Nwakonobi (2008) says that recent advances recorded in the field of biochemistry, physiology, ecology, genetics and molecular biology have made the subject a central focus in most human activities including solutions to the problems of food scarcity, pollution, population explosion, radiation disease, health, hygiene, conservation of natural resources, family life, various social vices as well as biotechnology and ethics. Biology is one of the basic sciences whose teaching and learning are universally known to be efficient and successful if only they are undertaken simultaneously with the help of adequate instructional materials and facilities

Damide (2000), Oloyede (2008) and Zayun (2008) opined that several factors have been advanced for the low performance of students in Biology. This includes Teaching and learning materials, abstract nature of some concepts in Biology, poor language skills, students‘ factor, teaching factor, societal factors, instruction and strategies employed by the teachers among others. Ahmad and Asghar (2011) states that, lack of strategy and techniques

usually affect students academic achievement adversely in science subject because most of the contents of science subjects are all abstract and difficult to learn.

Oloyede (2008) observed that student‘s poor performance in biology aspect of the subjects contributes substantially to the failure rate in ‘O’ level biology. Researchers ascertain that students‘ attitude could be enhanced when they participate in teaching-learning process (Duyilemi, Olagunju & olumide 2014).The persistent poor performance in biology need to be improved by using activity -based teaching strategy such as hands-on mind-on like computer simulation models, which allows students involvement.

EFFICACY OF EVACS AND EVOLVE COMPUTER SIMULATION MODELS ON ATTITUDE, RETENTION AND PERFORMANCE IN EVOLUTION CONCEPTS AMONG NCE STUDENTS IN NORTH WEST, NIGERIA’