Using WhatsApp in Teaching Chemistry and Biology to Tenth Graders

Abstract

The aim of the study is to assess the extent to which WhatsApp Instant Messaging is used to teach chemistry and biology to the tenth-grade students. A mixed approach was used, whereby the authors drew on the content analysis model to analyze quantitative data. The sample consisted of 28 Palestinian tenth-grade students and their teachers, who used WhatsApp Instant Messaging for four months (the Spring semester of 2019). The collected data was divided into four categories: the nature of the message (instructional, organizational, or social); the form of the message (texts, pictures/graphs, voice recordings, videos, or link-sharing); the direction of communication flow (from a teacher to a student, from a student to a teacher, from a student to a student, or from a teacher to a teacher); and knowledge exchange. Our findings suggest that WhatsApp is used more for non-instructional purposes– particularly socialization– yet the portion of instruction-related messages was somehow enough to predict more effective future use of the application for teaching/learning purposes.