Development and evaluation of physics podcasts as instructional materials for grade 9 high school students

Ma. Angelie A. MILLANES
UP Rural High School, Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines

Corresponding Author’s Email: mamillanes@up.edu.ph

Abstract

Several educational researches identify factors that can account to the poor performance of Filipino students in understanding concepts in physics. Some of these factors include the teacher’s quality, student’s attitude towards physics and the lack of instructional materials in teaching physics. The provision of effective and appropriate instructional materials can help address these setbacks, and thus, improve the quality of academic performance among the students. As an innovative instructional material, podcasting captures the attention of many educators. It is an alternative means of delivering content using audio files. This study involved the development of “The Physics Station”, a collection of 13 podcast episodes about different physics topics and their application to everyday life. It followed the 4 stages of podcast development, namely: (1) Planning and organization, (2) File production, (3) Web subscription and publication, and (4) Delivery and playback. With this intervention, they were utilized as instructional materials given to Grade 9 high school students of a laboratory school in Paciano Rizal, Bay, Laguna. After which, students evaluated all podcast episodes by answering an instrument entitled, Instructional Materials Motivation Survey (IMMS). Results showed that among the ACRS model, the Relevance sub-component had the highest mean score. Further, this implies that for any instructional materials or teaching approaches to be implemented inside the classroom, its relevance and meaningful connections should be considered to engage the students more and thus, promote lifelong learning.

Keywords: Podcast production, Physics education, Instructional material development, Luzon, Philippines

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