EXPLORING THE EFFECTIVENESS AND IMPACTS OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF MEDIA IN SCIENCE LEARNING

Abstract

The spread of COVID-19 has caused a high demand for online learning or self-learning at home. We focus on evaluating which media is most suitable for self-learning for the third graders. For effective assessment of children's learning, the study adopted AEIOU: Awareness; Enjoyment; Interest; Opinion formation; and Understanding as the evaluation framework. In this research, three types of media were implemented: animation, educational video, and science comics. Total 145 third graders were divided into three groups: animation group, educational video group, and science comics group, to learn the concept of heat transfer through one kind of media respectively. The results revealed that students had positive feedback on the three dimensions of Awareness, Enjoyment, and Interest. And all three media improved students' understanding of heat transfer without a difference. While in the dimension of Opinion formation, the students had less life experience and pre-knowledge, their performances were relatively low. In summary, the three types of media showed the effectiveness of self-learning for the third graders. Especially the animations proved to be the most suitable for the third-grade children to conduct self-learning. Keywords: science communication, AEIOU, heat transfer, Media