ABSTRACT

LAURITA PERAZ ARCA, University of the Philippines, The Virtual Learning Environment in Teaching Black Pepper Production at Pedro Guevara Memorial National High School Annex, Santa Cruz, Laguna, Philippines. Los Baños December 2006.

Major Professor:   Dr. Carolina P. Santillana

            This study aimed to test the effectiveness of Virtual Learning Environment on improving the respondents’ knowledge in terms of retention as a contribution to the limited number of empirical studies on the use of this mode of teaching at secondary level. Its respondents were thirty randomly selected fourth year high school students at Pedro Guevara Memorial National High School Annex, Santa Cruz, Laguna, Philippines.

The aforementioned aim of this study was realized using the pretest-treatment-posttest experimental design. Using this design, the researcher developed Virtual Learning Environment modules with black pepper production as content (the treatment materials); pretested the thirty respondents on their knowledge about the said content; exposed them to the treatment; posttested them immediately after exposure to the treatment (immediate recall posttest); and, posttested them again after a week of non-exposure to the said treatment (delayed recall posttest). The tests’ results were analyzed using t-test for dependent sample means. It was done by comparing the means between pretest and immediate recall posttest, between pretest and delayed recall posttest, and between immediate recall posttest and delayed recall posttest.

The effect of the respondents’ socio-demographic attributes on their knowledge improvement was also tested in this study. It was done by grouping the tests’ results according to socio-demographic attributes of the respondents. The test results of each group were then analyzed again by comparing the means between pretest and immediate recall posttest, between pretest and delayed recall posttest, and between immediate recall posttest and delayed recall posttest using t-test for dependent sample means.

Results of the data analysis led to the conclusion that using Virtual Learning Environment in teaching had been effective in improving the knowledge of the respondents in terms of immediate and delayed recall of information based on the significant mean difference between pretest and immediate recall posttest and between pretest and delayed recall posttest. It however resulted to insignificant effectiveness in improving their knowledge in terms of retention due to some unexpected circumstances.