Use of Google Classroom as Participation and Performance Enhancer Among Basic Science Postgraduates in Some Universities in Nigeria

The study is an empirical survey of the influence of Google classroom on the participation level and academic performance of Postgraduates in Nigerian Universities. It adopted quasi-experimental research. The targeted population was the Basic Science students at master’s level in Nigeria Universities. The sample consisted of 42 postgraduates of Science Education drawn from three Universities in the South Western part of Nigeria through the multistage sampling technique. Out of these, 26 students formed the experimental group while 16 constituted the control group. One research question was raised while five hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. There were two research instruments for the study namely the Students’ Participation Scale (SPS) and Students’ Performance Test (SPT) and there was a package for the Google Classroom Lecture Note designed by the researchers. The instruments were validated by experts in Test, Measurement and Evaluation (TME) and Science Education, all from the Faculty of Education, Ekiti State University, Ado-Ekiti. The reliability of the instruments was done through test re-test reliability test which yielded correlation coefficients of 0.72 and 0.84 respectively at 0.05 level of significance. The administration of the study lasted six weeks in three stages (pretest, treatment and post-test stages). The result of the study revealed that those taught with Google classroom have higher participation mean scores than those in the control group. It also showed that there was a significant difference in the performance mean scores of experimental and control groups. However, no significant difference was noticed in the participation and performance mean scores of male and female postgraduate students in the experimental group.