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Laboratory curriculum is an important part of the teaching of biology in high school. It can not only deliver knowledge to student, but also enhance their scientific insight and arouse their interests in science. Practically, however, time, resources, student quality and other factors posed limitations to the running of laboratory curriculum. Thus, a variety of supporting materials for laboratory curriculum came into being. Among them, digital teaching materials are becoming a trend because of the popularization of information technology. However currently existing digital teaching materials, though of good quality, often do not meet the requirement of teaching, and it is very difficult for biology teacher who want to use these material to modify them.
This study attempted to develop digital teaching materials from biology teachers' point of view using ADDIE model. Two labs of the high school biology laboratory curriculum were used as examples, which are: "observation of external morphology and internal structure of a frog" and "the crude extraction of DNA". The purposes of the study include the following four points: (1) to design and develop digital teaching materials of biological experiments curriculum which is consistent with the needs of teaching and learning; (2) the designed teaching materials should be able to enhance students’ learning motivation and facilitate their self-learning; (3) to apply the ADDIE model on creating biology digital teaching material, which make easy for biology teachers to create their own teaching materials that line with individual demand, under the limited funding and resources.
In compliance with the ADDIE model, this study was divided into five phases, including analysis, design, development, implement and evaluation. In the analysis phase, teachers’ and students’ demand of digital teaching materials were obtained through the "teaching needs analysis" and "learner analysis". The teaching materials were determined based on the results of "objectives analysis" and "content analysis". After the "analysis of environmental, software and hardware", we decided to use Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003/2007 and Adobe Presenter Version 6.0 (beta) as development tools. In the design phase, we designed the processes, scripts and interfaces of teaching. In the development phase, after collecting components, we created the powerpoint files, recorded them and exported them into digital teaching materials. During the implementation phase, we invited 10 voluntary students and 4 experts to read the materials. Besides, we also applied these materials in the field of teaching. After implementation, we conducted evaluation of the digital teaching materials. Evaluation was divided into two stages. In the first stage, we conducted formative evaluation (including expert evaluation and learner evaluation), and then we modified the content of the teaching materials based on our analysis of evaluation and feedback. In the second stage, we then conducted a second formative evaluation (including expert evaluation and learner evaluation).
In secondary expert formative evaluation, the three categories, including "content and structure of teaching materials", "design of teaching materials" and "design of media and interface", received positive feedbacks, with the average score of all indicators in a whole category above 4 points. In secondary learners formative evaluation, the three categories, including "learning interest", "understanding of experimental content", and "willingness of self-learning and overall evaluation", received positive feedbacks with their average scores of all the descriptions within the category above 3.5. These results suggested that these digital materials were of high quality, no matter served as supportive materials for teachers or as self-learning materials for students. .
We found in this study that: (1) our design and development of digital teaching materials for biological laboratory curriculum met both the learning needs of students and teaching needs of teachers; (2) the digital teaching materials could really improve students' motivation to learn, but whether a student learning actively or not is more related to individual’s potential motivation; (3) applying the ADDIE model did help biology teachers with limited funds and resources to quickly create digital teaching materials that meet the individual demand; (4) in order to get the maximum effect, we should pay attention to the timing, manner, and students’ learning attitude when using digital teaching materials in biological laboratory curriculum.
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