An Impact Assessment of Academic App in Motivating Students to Engage in Learning: A Case Study of Graph Plotting in Physics

Abstract

When it comes to courses needing high level of motivation to ensure continuous and adequate enrollment by students in Nigerian institutions of learning, Physics or Mathematics will come first. In order to reduce the level of apathy shown by students toward plotting graphs during Physics laboratory exercise, a graphing application (app) called UJ-Math Graphing Tool(UJ-MaGT) was developed. The popularity of the app among the year one students that enrolled for Physics practical courses in the department of Physics, University of Jo's necessitated this work which was to evaluate the effect of the app on the students' performance and readiness in graph plotting and to also validate a motivation scale that can be used in academic app designs. The results show great improvement in students' performance. A class mean of 11.4 was achieved with the help of the app as compared to 3.4 when the app is not used.