African Journal of Research in Mathematics, Science and Technology Education

When this article was first published, Figure 4 was incorrectly formatted, which rendered much of its information meaningless.

Learning within first-year biology is about inquiry, but in this content-heavy science students can easily fall into the trap of parrot-fashion learning. This study investigates the influence of lecturers’ expectation of students in meaning making on the nature of their slides and the quality of students’ note-making. Data were collected by classroom observations, video-recordings, a questionnaire for students and interviews with lecturers and students. The quantity and quality of students’ notes were analysed for four lectures. The analysis of data resulted in three categories of lecturers: ‘student-centred’, ‘student-directed’ and ‘teacher-centred’. The student-centred lecturers provided key points on their slides, anticipated that students would build on their class notes and focused on the development of the students’ criticalthinking ability. The student-directed and teacher-centred lecturers aimed to complete the syllabus and emphasised the provision of detailed slides that first-years needed to learn. In addition, student-directed lecturers stated that they attempted to simplify topics that they knew students found challenging. When undergraduates perceived that the lecturers’ slides did not provide sufficient content for assessments, they reported that they captured more notes during and after the lecture, but analysis revealed that the first-years’ notes were usually a close reflection of lecture slides.

This study, based on the theory of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge investigated the effectiveness of introducing open source YouTube videos in the teaching and learning of the Chemistry topic ‘Group Properties’ at a high school in Lesotho. A quasi-experimental design was used for two conveniently selected Form D classes; one class used as the experimental group ( n=49) and the other as a control group ( n=60). The questions in the pre-test and the similar post-test were formulated to establish the learners’ cognitive abilities in line with various levels of Bloom’s Cognitive Domain. The mean performance of the two groups before the intervention was not statistically different. After introducing the experimental group to YouTube videos the performance of the group was significantly better than that of the control group during the post-test. The performance of the experimental group was also significantly better than that of the control group at the higher cognitive levels of Bloom’s Cognitive Domain, namely, at application to evaluation. The incorporation of videos in teaching Chemistry provided a better option than the traditional method of science teaching. The use of the YouTube videos resulted in a doubling of the percentage of the experimental group learners passing the post-test (from 12 to 27%), while the percentage of control group learners passing the tests remained constant at 5% for both the pre-test and the post-test. In light of the significant benefits of using YouTube videos in this context of poor laboratory resources, it is recommended that teachers should be trained to integrate technology in their teaching in order to supplement practical work.