This study investigated the effectiveness of flipped classroom model (FC) and traditional classroom model (TC) in Biology on the quality of the high school students‘ performance. The research sample consisted of a total of 280 first grade high school students in Novi Sad, Serbia. The students in the experimental group learned Biology topic through the FC model, whereas the students in the control group were taught the same topic by the TC model. The instruments used in the research (the pretest and the posttest) contained the questions belonging to three different levels of cognitive learning according to the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy. The results indicated that students that were instructed by the flipped classroom in Biology performed better on the posttest as a whole, and in solving the tasks of all three levels of knowledge (remembering, understanding, and applying) than those instructed by the traditional teaching method. On the basis of the obtained results, a grater implementation of FC model in high school biology teaching is recommended as a way of improving the quality of biology teaching in our and other countries over the world and the level of our students‘ digital competencies.

No abstract

The Internet is a service where much information from the world of science, technology, fashion and entertainment can be found. With the development of mobile devices, information from the Internet has become available almost everywhere. This fact should be used to help students learn curriculum e-materials from smartphones, tablets and netbooks. One of the Internet services that can be successfully applied in teaching is a blog. This research has analyzed the effects of using blog as a web tool in biology teaching. The sample under research included 171 students divided into two groups: an experimental group which used a blog and a control group in which the teaching was conducted without a blog as a teaching tool. The students from both groups were first tested by means of a pre-test according to which the groups were at the same level of knowledge of biology and after covering the topic of Cytology both groups did the post-test. The research showed that the students who used the blog had statistically a significantly better result on the post-test. Further research showed that students make equal progress at all levels of knowledge with the help of blogs and that the blog is the most useful to advanced students. Keywords: blog in teaching biology, ICT in classroom, internet and education, learning biology.

Innovations in technology are rapid and workers' roles in the virtual environment have changed. Due to the great need to educate professionals who need to adapt quickly, the modernization of teaching is gaining momentum. Blog is one of the internet tools that can be effectively implemented in education. The aim of the research is to experimentally test the effects of the application of the blog Biosoikoslogos in biology teaching in relation to traditional teaching and to evaluate the attitudes of first-grade high school students (15-16 years of age) towards the characteristics of the blog. The theoretical method, descriptive method, experimental method with parallel groups, and methods with pedagogical statistics were applied in the research. The results of the study showed that the students who used the blog achieved statistically significantly better results than the students who did not use the blog. The results also showed that the most important features of the blog are those that are the most helpful for students to directly facilitate learning. The analysis of the results shows that blog-based biology teaching is significantly more effective than traditional teaching, should be applied more frequently in practice, and students should evaluate blog features differently

Initiatives by numerous American associations and various European projects constantly remind of the importance of linking science, technology, engineering and mathematics into a holistic approach to teaching and learning, known as the STEM approach. Comprehensive STEM education research mostly focuses on the effects of this approach on students’ performance and their attitudes towards the approach, whereas a significantly smaller number of studies have examined the instructional efficiency of the STEM approach in science teaching by assessing students’ performance, the mental effort invested in solving tasks and their involvement in STEM classes. With the intention to address the mentioned gap, the aim of this study is to determine the instructional efficiency of and students’ involvement in the STEM approach in biology teaching in primary school, compared to the non-STEM approach. The study employed quantitative research methodology and a true experimental design using pretest-posttest experimental and control groups. The results show that the STEM approach in biology teaching increases students’ performance and involvement and also contributes to the reduction of students’ mental effort. Based on the research results, we conclude that biology teachers should apply the STEM approach in presenting scientific concepts, as this contributes both to the quality of the acquired knowledge and its maintenance.