Comparative performance of undergraduate students in micro-teaching using Telegram and WhatsApp in collaborative learning settings

Comparative performance of undergraduate students in


INTRODUCTION
Technology has permeated almost all human endeavors, and its importance has cut across all facets of life.Advancement in technology has transformed teaching and learning to be more student-centered through the incorporation of technology in education.In view of this, different educational techniques other than teacher-centered instruction have emerged and are making tremendous breakthroughs in tertiary education (Falode & Mohammed, 2023;Mohammed & Ogar, 2023).Technology assists students in gaining knowledge, skills and techniques as they interact with each other.Educators now send instructional contents in a more flexible way because, through the use of technology, instructors can communicate through voice, images and texts.Technology provides interesting opportunities that enrich and transform teaching and learning, thereby providing teachers and students with new tools to access, organize and present information with the aim of enriching lessons through the use of various multimedia.Hence, most learners are visual learners as technology has become an integral part of their lives and without technology they may not be able to learn effectively (Azman et al., 2018).Technology affords different approach to learning by making learning interesting, engaging and student-centered (Mohammed et al., 2023).Technology is being used for teaching especially through social media learning that is now on the rise.Social media are characterized as Web 2.0 e-learning resources, which usually emphasize active participation, connectivity, collaboration and sharing of knowledge and ideas among different users (Muniasamy et al., 2015).Hakim (2019) viewed social media as a group of internet-based applications built on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, which allow for the creation and exchange of contents that are user-generated.Social media are a form of electronic communication channels such as websites for social networking and micro-blogging through which users create online communities in order to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other contents.Of recent, social media platforms like Telegram enable teaching and learning to be interactive and simplified because of the active engagement involved.
Telegram platform offers a student-centered teaching and learning engagement that uses online learning resources to facilitate information sharing outside the constraints of time and place.Telegram combines self-study with asynchronous interactions to promote learning, and it can be used to facilitate learning in conventional settings, as well as distance and continuing education (Denysiuk et al., 2018).Telegram is one of the most common user friendly social media platforms today, which allows users to create groups of up to 200,000 members and channels for transmission to infinite audiences.Telegram has the capacity of sending files of up to two gigabyte in size.Telegram is so flexible that it can be used not only to send and receive texts, images, audio and video but also documents in different formats.It should be noted that these types of documents are the main formats often used by lecturers to prepare notes, tutorials and assignments and then share with their students (Vivienne, 2016).Comparable to Telegram in the areas of online discussion and interaction is the WhatsApp application that is used by a wide range of users worldwide.
WhatsApp as a free messenger application, which works on various platforms like iPhone and android systems, and it is largely used to send multimedia contents like photos, videos, audio, and other instant messages in the form of text.WhatsApp can therefore be used for teaching and learning through the creation of online groups aimed at fostering communication with students, creating dialogue and encourage students to exchange ideas and information among themselves (Sonia & Rawekar, 2017).WhatsApp is now an effective way of increasing the success of teaching and learning because it makes students to develop a positive attitude towards their various courses.This is due to the fact that students can conveniently decide when to respond depending on their time schedule.WhatsApp incorporates the use of multimedia contents, where pictures, audio, videos, graphics, and texts can be used to support normal conventional classes (Cetinkaya, 2017).Ofoka (2019) added that WhatsApp enhances communication as well as active engagement of students when it comes to teaching and learning.It provides a medium through which teachers can discuss with students, and for everyone to participate including the introvert, which therefore boosts their confidence and engagement unlike during normal classroom session.The active engagement and interaction of students in Telegram and WhatsApp group discussion encourages high collaboration amongst students and their tutors.
Collaborative learning, as observed by Srinivas (2014), is based on the idea that learning is a naturally social act in which the participants talk among themselves.It therefore means that learners need a social environment, where they will interact, communicate, share and construct knowledge with peers for effective learning to take place.Under the collaborative learning environment, students are challenged to participate because they listen to different perspectives and are required to articulate and defend their ideas.Collaborative learning, which is embedded from primary schools to tertiary level institutions is among the most explored learning method in the 21 st century according to Mahbib et al. (2017).One of the major advantages of social media collaboration is that feedback can be given immediately.Online collaboration allows the collection of data for the comparison, discussion, analysis and feedback of knowledge among students, being an effective way to obtain experimental data that demonstrates the power of technology in group projects, which generate reports of its practices (Luna & Sequera, 2015).According to Williams and Augustine (2015), collaborative learning is very essential in teaching and learning because it encourages learners' active engagement in the learning process when they are usually involved in searching, finding and evaluating information from a variety of sources such as peers, teachers and the wider society to increase their knowledge; thus becoming accountable and responsible for the successful achievement of their own learning outcome and that of others.Based on the foregoing discuss, collaborative learning can be of great importance towards teaching micro-teaching.At this point, it is critical to ask that can Telegram and WhatsApp be used in a collaborative setting to enhance students' performance in micro-teaching?Micro-teaching is a scaled-down simulated teaching designed for the training of both pre-and in-service teachers.At the university level, it is taught in order to perfect the skills of the student-teachers and to enable them to prepare for the teachingpractice exercise and to prepare for life as professional teachers.Apart from being an essential process of transforming and modifying the student-teacher behavior to demonstrate a given behavior, micro-teaching also provides a huge opportunity for students to develop and improve their pedagogical skills within a small group of students mostly using limited period of five-10 minutes, records on video tape for reviewing, responding, refining and re-teaching towards perfection (Garba, 2018).Microteaching enables student-teachers to focus their attention on some specific skills at a time until mastery is attained.After acquiring competence in a number of skills in this way, the student-teacher takes to micro-teaching so as to demonstrate some level of competence.It is a vital technique, which provides continuous training to serving teachers.The Nigerian national policy on education recognizes the need to incorporate ICT in education.This will surely enhance achievement and retention of students in micro-teaching.
Academic achievement generally signifies the outcome of learning, having exposed the student to a particular treatment.It represents performance outcomes that indicate the extent to which a person has accomplished specific goals that were the focus of activities in instructional environments, specifically in school, college, and university (Ahmed & Inti, 2021).In the same vein, retention is the ability to remember things that have been taught (Mohammed & Ogar, 2023).Students' retentive ability can be enhanced through the use of appropriate technology like teaching student through social media platforms.
As a result of the foregoing and in spite of the technological advancement that has made teaching and learning to be effective, flexible, collaborative, engaging and interesting, most Nigerian lecturers do not leverage on the collaborative features provided by Telegram and WhatsApp platforms to cover for factors like lack of micro-teaching laboratories, large classroom sizes and inadequacy of time for students to present and be properly accessed.Normally, students teach before a small group and their teaching is recorded so as to be accessed and corrected.But because of the aforementioned challenges, students cannot be effectively accessed.The implication of these challenges, if not checked, is that teachers who are not well grounded will continue to be produced thereby adding to the education problems in Nigeria.Several studies on the effects of Telegram and WhatsApp on achievement and retention were conducted but none was carried out on Micro-teaching in collaborative learning settings in Nigeria.Thus, there is need to incorporate Telegram and WhatsApp platforms in collaborative learning settings to cover for lack of micro-teaching laboratories, large classroom sizes and inadequacy of time, where teachers and students can collaborate in groups in order to improve learning.As a result, one of the best ways towards ensuring effectiveness of teaching micro-teaching amongst undergraduate students is through the use of social media learning, which entails the grouping of students into various social media platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram.This study therefore hinges on the fact that whether Telegram and WhatsAppenhanced instructions in collaborative learning settings can accommodate large classroom sizes, lack of micro-teaching laboratory and inadequate time for everyone to present in order to enhance teaching and learning of micro-teaching among undergraduates in Gombe State, Nigeria.

Purpose of the Study
The purpose of the study is to investigate the comparative effect of Telegram and WhatsApp-enhanced instruction in collaborative learning settings on learning outcomes in micro-teaching among undergraduates in Gombe State.Specifically, the study seeks to: 1. Determine the effect of Telegram and WhatsApp-enhanced instruction in collaborative learning settings on the achievement of undergraduate students in micro-teaching.
2. Examine the effect of Telegram and WhatsApp-enhanced instruction in collaborative learning settings on the retention of undergraduate students in micro-teaching.

Research Questions
The following research questions were raised and answered in this study: 1. What is the difference in the mean achievement scores of undergraduate students taught micro-teaching using Telegram and WhatsApp-enhanced instruction in collaborative learning settings?
2. What is the difference in the mean retention scores of undergraduate students taught micro-teaching using Telegram and WhatsApp-enhanced instruction in collaborative learning settings?

Hypotheses
The following null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance: HO1.There is no significant difference in the mean achievement scores of undergraduate students taught micro-teaching using Telegram and WhatsApp-enhanced instruction in collaborative learning settings.

HO2.
There is no significant difference in the mean retention scores of undergraduate students taught micro-teaching using Telegram and WhatsApp-enhanced instruction in collaborative learning settings.

METHODOLOGY
The design adopted in this study is the pre-/post-test, quasi-experimental control group design (Table 1).

Participants
A sample of 282 year three faculty of education students that were enrolled on Telegram and WhatsApp platforms from Federal University Kashere and Gombe State University, Nigeria, respectively was purposively selected to be used for the study.The choice of year three students was because they were the ones offering micro-teaching as a course in preparation for teaching practice exercise.The schools were purposively sampled because they were the only two universities in Gombe State offering micro- teaching as a course.Faculty of education was selected because micro-teaching is taught as a course in the faculty.The two sampled groups were assigned into experimental group I and experimental group II using a simple random sampling technique.

Instrument
The research instrument consisted of a micro-teaching achievement test (MTAT) (Appendix A), which comprised of 30-item multiple choice questions developed based on Bloom's taxonomy table of specifications that cuts across the cognitive domain of educational objectives.The reason for the table of specification was to show the spread of the questions across all the objectives.The achievement test had two sections: A and B. Section A solicited information about the students' personal data, while section B comprised of 30 objective questions drawn from the departmental handbook with options A-D, containing one correct answer and three distracters.The multiple-choice questions were administered as a pre-test, post-test, and retention test to experimental group I and experimental group II.MTAT was validated by experts in the field of educational technology and curriculum studies, whereby split-half method of reliability was used to obtain a value of 0.91 using Pearson product moment correlation.

Data Collection & Analysis
The students were added into Telegram and WhatsApp platforms for engagement during the first week of the experiment.A pre-test was administered in order to determine the entry level of the students in the second week.The online interaction took place in the third, fourth, and fifth weeks, whereby various micro-teaching contents in the form of online texts and instant messages were dropped by the researcher at least twice a week.In order to create an online collaborative learning environment, the students were grouped into various sub-groups based on their teaching subjects, where they worked together in groups.The researcher also dropped assignments that required the students to work in groups and to discuss online in order to provide solutions.By the sixth week, a post-test was administered.Another test was administered after two weeks in order to determine the level of retention.The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics involving mean and standard deviation while inferential statistics involving an independent sample t-test was used to test the null hypothesis using SPSS package version 25.

RESULTS
Research Question 1.What is the difference in the mean achievement scores of undergraduate students taught microteaching using Telegram and WhatsApp-enhanced instruction in collaborative learning settings?
The data presented in Table 2 shows the mean and standard deviation of the pre-and post-test achievement scores of both experimental group I (Telegram) and experimental group II (WhatsApp).From Table 2, experimental group I (Telegram) had a mean and standard deviation of 34.87 and 5.46, respectively in the pre-test; and a mean score of 66.57 and a standard deviation of 11.94 in the post-test.The pre-and post-test mean difference was 31.70.Also, from Table 2, it can be seen that experimental group II (WhatsApp) had a mean of 36.55 and a standard deviation of 4.33 in the pre-test and a mean score of 76.35 and a standard deviation of 7.31 in the post-test.The pre-and post-test mean difference was 39.80.With this result, therefore, the students in experimental group II (WhatsApp) performed better with a higher mean, than those in experimental group I (Telegram).
Research Question 2. What is the difference in the mean retention scores of undergraduate students taught micro-teaching using Telegram and WhatsApp-enhanced instruction in collaborative learning settings?
Table 3 shows the post-test and retention scores of experimental group I (Telegram) and experimental group II (WhatsApp).From Table 3, experimental group I (Telegram) had a mean score of 66.57 and a standard deviation of 11.94 in the post-test and a mean of 64.29 and a standard deviation of 10.86 in the retention test.The mean difference between the post-test and retention scores in experimental group I was 2.28.Also, from Table 3, experimental group II (WhatsApp) had a mean of 76.35 and a standard deviation of 7.31 in the post-test and a mean of 73.27 and a standard deviation of 6.39 in the retention test.The mean difference in the post-test and retention scores of experimental group II (WhatsApp) was 3.08.With this result, experimental group II (WhatsApp), with a higher mean retention gain of 3.08, retained more than the experimental group I (Telegram).

Testing of Null Hypothesis
Hypothesis 1.There is no significant difference in the mean achievement scores of undergraduate students taught microteaching using Telegram and WhatsApp-enhanced instruction in collaborative learning settings.In order to test hypothesis one, independent sample t-test was used to analyze the scores of the two groups as presented in Table 4. Table 4 shows the independent sample t-test result of the mean achievement scores of students taught micro-teaching using Telegram (Appendix B) and WhatsApp learning platform (Appendix C).From Table 4, it can be observed that Telegram had a mean of 66.57 and standard deviation of 11.94.WhatsApp had a mean of 76.35 and a standard deviation of 7.31.Also, t= 3.264, df= 280 and p-value= .000.Therefore, since p<0.05, the null hypothesis is hereby rejected.This means that there is a significant difference in the mean achievement scores of the two groups in favour of the WhatsApp platform.
Hypothesis 2. There is no significant difference in the mean retention scores of undergraduate students taught micro-teaching using Telegram and WhatsApp-enhanced instruction in collaborative learning settings.
In order to test hypothesis two, independent sample t-test was used to analyze the scores of the two groups as presented in Table 5.Table 5 shows the independent sample t-test result of the mean retention scores of students taught micro-teaching using Telegram and WhatsApp learning platform.From Table 5, it can be observed that Telegram had a mean retention of 64.29 and standard deviation of 10.86.WhatsApp had a mean retention of 73.27 and a standard deviation of 6.39.Also, t= 4.292, df= 280 and p-value= 0.000.Therefore, since p<0.05, the null hypothesis is hereby rejected.This means that there is a significant difference in the mean retention scores of the two groups in favor of the WhatsApp platform.

DISCUSSION
The result of hypothesis one revealed that the students exposed to WhatsApp learning platform in collaborative learning settings performed better than those in Telegram learning platform.This was seen when hypothesis one was tested and it was rejected, which therefore means a significant difference existed in the mean scores of the two groups in favor of WhatsApp learning platform.The significant difference in favor of WhatsApp was due to the level of active participation, timely response and prompt interaction, which the students on the WhatsApp platform displayed and which manifested in their achievement, unlike the Telegram platform, which had slow response and interaction.It is also due to the fact that WhatsApp is a popular application as against Telegram.This finding agrees with the findings of Almogheerah (2020), Arash et al. (2018), Cetinkaya and Sutco (2018), Gurleyere (2019), Liya and Dede (2017), Ofoka (2019), Ruba et al. (2018), andSafitri (2021), which revealed that WhatsApp increased students achievement when compared to other strategies.Though the aforementioned studies did not incorporate collaborative learning, it revealed that WhatsApp can be used to enhance achievement more than Telegram.On the other hand, this finding disagrees with the studies conducted by Azman et al. (2018), Berenji and Saeidi (2017), Movafagh (2017), Nabati (2018), Suryati and Adnyana (2020), Tabrizi andOnvani (2020), Vahdat et al. (2020), Xobande (2017), and Zarei (2017), which revealed that students' performance increased tremendously when exposed to instruction on Telegram.Also, this finding disagrees with Ilobeneke et al. (2018a), which revealed no significant difference in the achievement of students exposed to WhatsApp and Facebook instruction.This means that Telegram is also an effective channel of increasing students' achievement.As a result of the variation found in this study, more studies can therefore be conducted.
The result of hypothesis two revealed that the students exposed to WhatsApp learning platform in collaborative learning settings retained better than those on Telegram platform.The was seen when hypothesis two was tested and it was rejected, which therefore means a significant difference existed in the mean retention scores of the two groups in favor of WhatsApp learning platform.The high retention exhibited by students on the WhatsApp platform was due to the level of active participation and interaction, which the students displayed, thereby forming a lasting cognitive experience on them unlike the Telegram platform, where interaction and response was less.Additionally, the students in the WhatsApp platform had a slightly higher retention test scores, indicating that majority of them retained the concepts better than their Telegram counterpart.This finding agrees with Achor et al. (2014) and Ofoka (2019) whose finding revealed a significant difference in the retention scores of students.However, it disagrees with the findings of Fahimeh and Zahrah (2019) and Xobande (2017), which reported no significant difference in the retention of students exposed to Telegram instruction.While some of the findings revealed WhatsApp can enhance retention more than Telegram, some of the findings revealed no significant difference in the retention of students.Therefore, more studies need to be conducted to close the gaps.

CONCLUSIONS
The deployment of WhatsApp and Telegram platforms in collaborative learning settings increased students' achievement and retention but students in WhatsApp platform performed better in achievement and retention compared to Telegram.Though this study is limited to just one Nigerian state and university undergraduates, these platforms have, however, demonstrated their potential to tackle the problems of lack of micro-teaching laboratories, inadequate time by making learning flexible as well as large classroom sizes for they can be used effectively to improve learning outcomes of students in micro-teaching.In line with this, more studies can be conducted in other areas to further authenticate the effectiveness of these platforms.

Recommendations
Based on the findings of this study, the following recommendations are hereby made: 1. Lecturers should adopt the use of social media tools like Telegram and WhatsApp during classroom instruction because they are engaging, interesting, and flexible.
2. Lecturers should adopt the use of social media collaborative learning approach since students are always on their phones, they can equally use it for instructional purposes.
Figure B1.Telegram learning platform (Interphase of the group chat used for the study through Telegram application)

Table 1 .
Research design layout Pre-test for experimental group I & experimental group II; O2: Post-test for experimental group I & experimental group II; O 3: Retention for experimental group I & experimental group II; X1: Telegram learning platform; & X2: WhatsApp learning platform

Table 2 .
Mean & standard deviation of pre-& post-test scores of experimental group I & II

Table 3 .
Mean & standard deviation of post-test & retention scores of experimental group I & II

Table 4 .
Independent sample t-test result of mean achievement scores of students taught micro-teaching using Telegram & WhatsApp learning platform

Table 5 .
Independent sample t-test result of mean retention scores of students taught micro-teaching using Telegram & WhatsApp learning platform