Enhancing High School Students’ Knowledge and Awareness of Disaster Readiness and Risk Reduction through Interactive Anime-Inspired Computer Simulation

High School Students’ Knowledge and Awareness of Disaster Readiness and Risk Reduction

Abstract

The Department of Education (DepEd) has started increasing the knowledge and practices of the students in disaster readiness and risk reduction and preparedness (DRRR) by incorporating the DRRR learning course into the senior high school (SHS) curriculum. However, despite such an initiative, some students still lack interest in expanding their learning due to the conventional learning delivery. To address the learning problem, an anime-inspired learning material was proposed to make the learning process more interactive, engaging, relatable, and alive. Hence, using the quasi-experimental pretest-posttest research design, the study aimed to determine the effectiveness of the interactive anime-inspired computer simulation on enhancing high school students’ knowledge and awareness of DRRR. Fifty (50) students from Grade 11 level participated in discussions with interactive anime-inspired computer simulation as learning support. Results revealed that Grade 11 students’ knowledge and awareness of the DRRR were significantly increased. The three groups also advanced their knowledge of the various types of hazards and ways to manage the effects of the disasters. It was also indicated that there were significant differences between the formative test mean scores of the three groups. Likewise, there are substantial differences between the three groups’ pretest and post-test mean scores. Moreover, Grade 11 students emphasized that their interest and attention span towards learning those topics were maximally maintained due to the game-oriented discussion and aesthetically appealing graphics. With these, it is suggested that teachers develop anime-inspired interactive learning tools to sustain students’ interest in acquiring practical knowledge.