ABSTRACT

The study investigated the effect of computer assisted students’ team learning strategy on achievement and retention in secondary school physics in Abia State. A pre-test, post-test control group design with four (4) intact classes, involving experimental and control groups, were used for the study. The population for the study consisted of three thousand, one hundred and fifty (3,150) senior secondary school one (SS1) physics students’ from 225 co-educational public secondary schools in Abia State. A Purposive Sampling technique was used to obtain 140 SSS1 students from four intact classes sampled from a population of 3,150 Physics students’ in four (4) public secondary schools in Abia State. The experimental groups were taught using computer assisted students’ team learning strategy (CASTLS) while the control groups were taught physics using the expository teaching method (ETM). The instrument for data collection was a 50 item multiple choice Physics Achievement Test (PAT) and Kuder-Richardson (K-R 20) was used to obtain a reliability index of 0.82. Six research questions and six hypotheses, formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance, guided the study. The research questions were answered using mean and standard deviation while the null hypotheses were tested using Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) at 0.05 level of significance. The Analysis showed that Computer Assisted Students’ Team Learning Strategy had significant effect on the students’ achievement and retention. The findings also showed that gender did not have significant effect on the students’ achievement and retention. Based on the findings it was recommended that computer assisted student’s team learning strategy should be given positive consideration as its effective utilization improved students’ achievement and retention.  Workshops and seminars should be organized to train in-service teachers and emphasize CASTLS method in the training of pre-service teachers and others.