EFFECTIVENESS OF THE CAUSE AND EFFECT MODEL BASED INSTRUCTION ON IMPROVING INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY RELATED ETHICAL CONDUCT AMONG K-8 STUDENTS

Dr. Bahadir Eristi
G. Feryal Kucuker
Anadolu University

ABSTRACT

This research aims to determine effectiveness of the cause and effect model on improving information technology related ethical conduct among K-8 students. This research was designed as pretest-posttest control group. In the research, the experimental and control groups were determined randomly. The date of the research is 2010 and it was conducted in a primary school in Eskisehir in Turkey. The participants of the research are total of 88 students who attend fifth class of a primary school. The experimental implementation of the research constitutes curriculum of the information technology course and a total of five computer ethical rules and social values. The data of the research was collected by the “Information technology course-ethics values test" which was developed by the researchers. The retest reliability coefficient of test mentioned above is [r=.92; p<0.001] and Cronbach's alpha is, [r =.90; p<0.001]. In order to analyze calculation of descriptive statistics, a three-way ANOVA with treatment (experiment vs. control) and gender as the between-subjects factors and test time (pre vs. post) as the within-subjects factor was conducted. There was a significant difference between the experiment and the control group and between the pre- and post-tests both of which were significant at a probability value below 0.001. The interaction between the test time and treatment at a p-value below 0.001 revealed that the difference between the groups was not consistent across test times. The interaction effect between gender and the test time was statistically significant. Further analyses revealed that both genders in both groups had significantly higher scores in the post administration whereas the increase in males was better than the increase in females. A final set of analyses was conducted to see the influence of the frequency of PC use per week on ethics scores.

KEYWORDS

Cause and effect model, Teaching of ethical values, IT ethics, Primary students.

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