GASPRO International Journal of Eminent Scholars

ABSTRACT

The study sought to find out the virtual simulation and gaming strategies on science students’ academic achievement on the concept of mathematics in United Kingdom. The research design adopted for the study was a quasi-experimental design specifically pretest-posttest control groups design. The study was carried out in United Kingdom. The population of the study comprised of all Senior secondary one (SS1) students of 2019/2020 academic session in United Kingdom. The sample of the study was one hundred and fifty (150) student from the three selected secondary schools in United Kingdom. The researcher developed an instrument tagged “Virtual Simulation and Gaming Strategies on Science Students’ Academic Achievement on the Concept of Mathematics Questionnaire” (VSGSSSAACMQ) for date collection. The instrument was administered to the respondent with the aid of a researcher. The instrument was face and content validated by two experts in test, measurement and evaluation in the United Kingdom. To test the reliability, a test retest method was used. A reliability test was conducted with 20 students who did not take part of the main study and reliability co-efficient of (0.77) was obtained and this was considered adequate and reliable for the study. Before the research work was conducted, a letter of permission for the research work was submitted by the researcher to the principal of the two schools, who in turn granted permission for the commencement of the research work. Mean and standard deviations were used to answer research questions while independent t-test statistics was used for data analysis meant to test the hypotheses. All hypotheses were tested at 0.05 alpha levels of significance. The study concluded that virtual simulations represent the evolution of the model over time. Often, gaming strategies are used to execute the virtual simulation in teaching of mathematics in United Kingdom. Gaming strategies allow experts to quickly come to grips with the way in which learning activities, outcomes the feedback and roles, as well as to enhance the in-game learning experience. There is neutral relationship between the use of simulations and gaming strategies in learning mathematics to achieve academic performance. One of the recommendations made was that learning attributes and game mechanics should be designed and incorporated by faculty, specifically with a view to fully integrate these into lesson plans and the learning process as a whole

KEYWORDS: Virtual Simulation, Gaming Strategies, Science Students, Academic Achievement, Mathematics and United Kingdom