Effect of Intelligent Tutoring System on Secondary School Students’ Academic Achievement in Biology in Esan West, Edo State

Abstract

Within the domain of educational biology, despite the recognized societal importance of biological knowledge, student achievement in this discipline has persistently underperformed. The present study was on the effect of intelligent tutoring system on secondary school students’ academic achievement in Biology in Edo state. The study adopted a quasi-experimental research design, specifically the non-randomized pretest-posttest control group design. The population of the study comprised 1,833 senior secondary school II students from twelve public secondary schools, while a sample of 88 students (52 males and 36 females) drawn from two intact classes was used for the study. The instrument used for data collection was Biology Achievement Test (BAT). adopted from WAEC past questions, with a reliability coefficient of 0.82 obtained using the Kuder Richardson (K-21) formula. Two hypotheses were formulated and tested at a 0.05 level of significance. The data collected from the respondents were analysed using mean and standard deviation for research question one and two and Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the hypotheses one and two formulated for the study. The findings revealed that students taught Biology using the Intelligent Tutoring System achieved higher post-test mean scores of 75.73 than those taught using the conventional teaching method was 69.12. The study further revealed that there was a significant effect of instructional strategies on students’ academic achievement in Biology, P < 0.05 However, no significant difference was found in the academic achievement of male and female students exposed to the Intelligent Tutoring System. Based on the finding, Intelligent Tutoring System is an effective instructional strategy for improving students’ academic achievement in Biology regardless of the gender. It was therefore recommended that Biology teachers should integrate Intelligent Tutoring Systems into classroom instruction to enhance students’ academic achievement and improve understanding of difficult Biology concepts.