Effects of learning activity package on students’ academic performances in digestive and circulatory systems

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the effect of a Learning Activity Package (LAP) on students' academic performance in digestive and circulatory systems. The quasiexperimental design involved a pre-test and post-test non-equivalent group design, with 88 students in total divided into experimental and control groups. The experimental group consisted of 45 Year 2 General Arts students in Anlo senior high school and the control group, 43 Year 2 General Arts students from Zion College senior high school. These two schools were purposively sampled. The experimental group was taught using the LAP while the control group received conventional method. Achievement Test (AT) was used to collect data which consisted of twenty multiple-choice questions with four possible answers, labelled A to D, short answers items, practical test and essay type test were generated from the various subunits which was analysed using inferential and descriptive statistics. Results showed that the experimental group had mean score 33.07 and the control group, 25.05 with significant differences (p = 0.001) which is less than 0.05 significant value, this indicated that there was statistically significant difference between mean score of student taught digestive and circulatory system using LAP and those taught using conventional method. Comparing performance of male and female, females performed better on average, of mean score 34.83 and male 33.77 with p-value (0.073) which is greater than 0.05 level of significant, therefore there was no statistically significant difference between mean scores of males and females student taught digestive and circulatory system using LAP , Under the experimental group, mean scores 42.62, 32.16 and 28.93 for high, average and low ability group respectively, while the control group recorded mean scores of 32.09, 24.27 and 19.94 for high, average and low ability group respectively, a significant value (p = 0.001) showed that LAP was particularly effective for low-achieving students, as they showed notable gains. Furthermore, the experimental group had significantly higher mean scores compared to the control group, with a practically significant difference in scores. Overall, the findings suggest that the use of LAP as a teaching method improve students' academic performances in digestive and circulatory systems. Based on these findings, it is recommended that instructors should consider integrating the learning activity package (LAP) in their teaching approach. Further, additional resources and support should be provided to low-ability students to ensure their success.