Effects of the Environments of Doodly-Produced Multimedia Instructions on the Academic Interest of Undergraduate Educational Technology Students

Abstract

This study scrutinized the effects of Doodly-produced multimedia instructions on the academic interest of undergraduate Educational Technology (EdTech) students in Cross River State's public universities. Utilizing a 2x2 pre-test/post-test quasi-experimental factorial design, the research examined two instructional environments (classroom vs. online) while adopting gender as a mediating variable. The study population comprised 3,065 third-year education students from the University of Calabar and the University of Cross River State. Through purposive and simple random sampling, 196 students across two intact classes were selected (105 classroom-based; 91 online-based), consisting of 92 males and 104 females. Data were collected using the Educational Technology Interest Inventory (ETII), which after face and construct validation demonstrated high internal consistency with a Cronbach Alpha reliability index of 0.87. The three null hypotheses were tested using the Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) at a 0.05 significance level. The analytical output revealed that Doodly-produced multimedia significantly enhanced academic interest across both learning environments. Furthermore, no significant influence of gender was found, nor was there a statistically significant interaction effect between the instructional environment and gender. The study concludes that Doodly is an effective, gender-neutral tool for boosting EdTech student’s interest in both physical and digital settings.