CONSOLIDATING DIDACTIC PEDAGOGIES IN MATHEMATICS EDUCATION IN THE COVID19 PANDEMIC: EMERGENCY OF NEW TEACHING EXPERIENCES AND PEDAGOGY PRACTICES

Up to 350 words. No references allowed. Abstracts may be submitted at a later date.
In modern times, didactics means teaching or instruction. Even though still contentious as to whether teaching stands alone and must always be coupled with learning, the critical issues of COVID19 pandemic compels the education world to redesign didactics to convey neutral meanings that are not limited to teaching or instruction but also learning. The purpose of this study was to compare the learning outcomes of face-to-face classroom instruction with didactics pedagogies. We explored the quasi-experimental study of second-year students studying mathematics, who were novice learners in the university moodle learning systems. We assessed baseline knowledge of the students with objective pre-test items. We earlier delivered lessons through the face-to-face systems and the students were assessed. We then followed up with an interactive computer Learning Management System covering the same mathematics topics of the semester and subsequently assessed the students. The pretest and post-test items were written by the researchers and validated with a different group of lecturers and students. The mean scores were analyzed using dependent t-test and the attitudes were assessed by a 5-point Likert scale. Thirty-six out of fifty students successfully completed the work on the internet. The mean gain scores showed that students acquired more knowledge from the didactic pedagogies than the face-to-face classroom instruction (didactic: 24.32% ± 16.06; face-to-face: 8.13% ± 13.21). The mean difference between didactic pedagogies and face-to-face was 14.43% with 95% confidence interval [p = 0.001. The attitudinal scale revealed that 70% of the students believed the didactic pedagogies did impact on their performance and 85% of the students attested that they really enjoyed the didactic methods. Just 56% of the students preferred the didactic pedagogies and will continue to learn mathematics via didactics even if we resume face-to-face classroom instruction. We concluded that didactic pedagogies were not equivalent to face-to-face instruction. It was also concluded that didactic pedagogies are valuable and effective through the computer Moodle. We therefore recommended that didactics should be inculcated into mathematics teaching experiences, pedagogy and practice.