Investigating the Effect of the Digitised Jigsaw II Strategy on Correcting Undergraduates’ Misconceptions in Cell Biology

Abstract

The study investigated the effect of the digitised Jigsaw II instructional strategy on remediating misconceptions in cell biology among undergraduates in Ondo State, Nigeria. Two purposes and two hypotheses guided the study. A quasi-experiment of pre-test, post-test, non-equivalent control group design was adopted for the study. The purposive sampling technique was used to select 64 undergraduates across two universities who participated in this study. Two research instruments were used for the collection of data, and they include the Cell Biology Conception Test (CBCT) and the Digitised Jigsaw II Instructional Package (DJIP). The CBCT and DJIP were given to three experts in the Department of Biological Sciences and Department of Science Education, Al-Hikmah University, Ilorin, for face and content validity. The data collected in the pre-test and post-test of both groups was analysed using t-test statistics at 0.05 level of significance. This study found a significant difference in the number of misconceptions remediated between students taught using the digitised jigsaw II strategy and those taught using conventional teaching methods. Also, there was no significant difference in the number of misconceptions remediated between male and female students when taught cell biology using the digitised jigsaw II strategy. It is recommended that biology lecturers should adopt the digitised Jigsaw II strategy for teaching cell biology without gender-based differentiation in order to improve undergraduates' understanding and remediate their misconceptions in biology.