Abstract:
The study determined the effects of Individualistic and Cooperative Computer-Assisted Instructional strategies on Achievement, Interest and Retention of Junior Secondary Schools Social Studies students in Niger State, Nigeria. The study was carried out due to poor achievement of Social Studies students in external examination in the state. The study was guided by twelve research questions and twelve null hypotheses. The study adopted quasi-experimental factorial research design, specifically 2X2 pretest-posttest quasi experimental research design. The sample was 150 JSS II students, (99 male and 51 female). Purposive sampling was used to select two co-educational junior secondary schools used for the study. The instruments used for data collection were; Social Studies Achievement Test (SOSAT), Social Studies Interest Inventory (SOSII), Retention Social Studies Achievement Test (RET-SOSAT) and Retention Social Studies Interest Inventory (RET-SOSII) All the instruments were researcher developed. The instruments were faced validated by specialists from the department of Social Science Education and from Measurement and Evaluation unit of the Department of Science Education University of Nigeria Nsukka. The instruments (SOSAT and SOSII) were trial tested on 20 Junior Secondary school two Social Studies students in Minna. The internal consistency reliability of SOSAT was estimated using Kuder Richardson-21 (K – R21) and an index of 0.77 was obtained. On the other hand, the reliability of SOSII was estimated using Cronbach Alpha method and a reliability index of 0.71 was obtained. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while analysis of covariance was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study revealed that; Cooperative Computer-Assisted Instructional strategy significantly enhanced the achievement and interest of students in Social Studies more than the Individualistic Computer-Assisted Instructional strategy. There were no significant gender differences in the achievement, interest and retention of the students in Social Studies. However, female students performed better than male students in retention achievement test. There were no significant interaction effect of strategy and gender on students’ achievement, interest and retention in Social Studies. It was recommended among others that Social Studies teachers should be adequately encouraged by the government to adopt the use of Cooperative Computer-Assisted Instructional Strategy in the teaching of Social Studies at secondary school level since it enhanced achievement, interest and retention of students in Social Studies.
