ABSTRACT

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The study examined the effects of audio-visual instructional materials on senior secondary students' achievement in agricultural science in Abia state Nigeria. 100 students from four secondary schools assigned either into one of the three experimental groups: film plus Narration; film plus On-screen Text; film plus Narration plus On-screen Text or the control group. The study made use of quasi experimental design. The pretest, posttest experimental and control groups design was adopted. A 25-item multiple-choice objective test termed Agricultural science Achievement Test (ASAT) was used for collecting data. The validated ASAT was tested for reliability using Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (r), which yielded 0.82. Three research questions and three null hypotheses (Ho) were formulated to guide the study. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) and Scheffe’s post-hoc analysis at 0.05% level of significance were used in determining the significant differences among the four groups. The results showed that there was no statistically significant difference among the treatment groups. Generally, students under video-based multimedia instruction performed better than their counterparts in the conventional teaching method. This implied that audio-visual instructional materials were highly effective than audio instructional materials only. Based on the findings, discussions, conclusions and recommendations are made which includes that, teachers should expose agricultural science students to video-based multimedia instructional strategies so as to promote effective and active learning, motivation, learning by doing and learning by experience among students. Government should make funds available and sponsor the teachers’ attendance at conferences, seminars and workshops on utilization of video-based multimedia instructional materials in the teaching and learning of agricultural science. In conclusion, the failure rate of students will be curtailed if agricultural science teachers were made to utilize appropriate and relevant audio-visual instructional materials other than audio alone while teaching agricultural science in secondary schools in Abia State.