Proforma on Students' Academic Performance

INTRODUCTION

1.1       Background to the Study

Instructional materials is a term frequently heard and discussed among educational technologists today. Unless clearly defined, the term can alternatively mean the development of computer based hardware and software packages produced on a mass scale and yet allow individualized use and learning. In essence, instructional materials merge multiple levels of learning into an educational tool that allows for diversity in curricula presentation.

One of the critical challenges facing teacher education, especially in Nigeria, is how to improve the quality of teaching and learning in schools. Concerns regarding the improvement of the quality of teaching are central to the broader question of improving the quality of education (National Board of Employment, Education, and Training, 2004; UNESCO, 2006). A major factor associated with education quality relates to teacher quality (Sergiovanni, 2001; UNESCO, 2006).

Beach and Reinhartz (2000) viewed instructional supervision as a process that caters for instruction and provides teachers with feedback on their teaching so as to strengthen instructional skills to improve performance. According to Wanzare and Da Costa (2000), the purpose of instructional supervision is to focus on teachers’ instructional improvement which, in turn, improves student academic achievement. In Nigeria, instructional supervision has often been seen as the main vehicle through which improvement of teaching and learning in schools can be achieved, with principals as instructional supervisors.

Mayer (2001) viewed instructional materials as the exciting combination of computer hardware and software that allows you to integrate video, animation, audio graphics and test resources to develop effective presentation on an affordable desktop computer. But Philips (1990) opined that “Instructional materials are characterized by the presence of text, pictures, sound animation and video, some or all of which are organized into some colorant programme. However, today’s instructional material is a carefully woven combination of text, graphic, sound, animation and video elements. If the end user is allowed that is the viewer of an instructional material project, is allowed to control “what ““when” and ’’how’’ the elements are presented, it becomes interactive instructional materials. As such, instructional materials can be defined as an integration of multiple media elements (audio, video, graphic, text animation e.t.c.) into one synergetic and symbiotic whole that results in more benefit for the end user than any of the media element can provide individually.