The effect of computer II course on the achievements of pre-service teachers and their attitudes towards computer-assisted instruction

Abstract

The present study aimed to investigate the effect of Computer II course on the achievements of pre-service teachers and their attitudes towards computer-assisted instruction. For this purpose, the study was designed as a one-group pretest-posttest model. The participants of the research were determined by criterion sampling method. In this context, the study was conducted with 180 pre-service teachers attending Computer II course at Manisa Celal Bayar University, Faculty of Education in Turkey during the 2017-2018 academic year spring semester. An achievement test was applied to determine the academic achievements of pre-service teachers before and after the instruction of the course, and computer-assisted instruction attitude scale was applied to determine their attitudes towards the computer-assisted instruction. Independent samples ttest, paired sample t-test, ANOVA and simple linear regression were used to analyze the data. The study findings demonstrated that Computer II course had positive contributions to both the attitudes and the achievements of pre-service teachers. Besides, it was understood that Computer II achievement scores of pre-service teachers from Guidance and Psychological Counseling department, and the attitude scores towards computer-assisted instruction of preservice teachers from Teacher Training in Turkish were higher. Moreover, pre-service teachers who have personal computers had higher attitudes towards computer-assisted instruction.Furthermore, it was determined that the achievement in the course was a significant predictor of pre-service teachers’ attitudes towards computer-assisted instruction. It was considered that the present study findings would be beneficial for future researchers, who would study computerassisted instruction, Computer II and similar courses. At the end of the paper, several suggestions that could guide future studies and applications were presented.