The effect of a Supplemental Video Instruction program on the achievement and perceived debilitating test anxiety of community college students enrolled for the first time in introductory General Biology I

This study sought to determine if teacher-made videotape lessons, known as Supplemental Video Instruction, (two topics, The Cell Cycle and Introducing Mendelian Genetics) could help students who viewed them in addition to their traditional lecture classes to earn significantly higher achievement scores and significantly lower perceived debilitating test anxiety scores than those students who viewed only the videotapes or those who only attended traditional lecture instruction. Other independent and combined relationships were examined--those between achievement and perceived debilitating test anxiety and a group of specific demographic variables.; The study was conducted at a community college in southwest Mississippi during the 1990-91 fall semester. Fifty-four students enrolled for the first time in two General Biology I classes taught by the investigator were randomly assigned to three groups, eighteen in each. The groups were compared by covariance, semipartial correlation, multiple correlation, and interaction effects within the framework of multiple linear regression techniques.; For The Cell Cycle topic, no significant differences were found among achievement means or perceived debilitating test anxiety means of the three groups for the three instructional methodologies. Only perceived debilitating test anxiety, among the specified variables, was significantly related to achievement. A significant relationship was found between achievement scores, but not perceived debilitating test anxiety, and the combined set of predictor variables.; For the Introducing Mendelian Genetics topic, a significant difference in mean achievement was found among the three groups. No significance was found among the perceived debilitating test anxiety means. A significant independent relationship was found between achievement and reading comprehension. No significant independent relationships were found between the criterion variable of perceived debilitating test anxiety and the predictor variables. Both achievement and perceived debilitating test anxiety as criterion variables were found to show significant relationships to the combined sets of predictor variables.; The relationship between achievement and perceived debilitating test anxiety was found to be negative at the conclusion of the coverage of the first and second topic. However, the relationship was more negative at the conclusion of the first topic than at the conclusion of the second topic.