Effect of Multimedia Instructional Materials in Open and Distance Learning

Academic Paper from the year 2019 in the subject Didactics - Common Didactics, Educational Objectives, Methods, grade: 3, , course: Psychology Department, language: English, abstract: The study assessed the effectiveness of multimedia instructional materials on students' academic performance. Between groups experimental design was used where three treatment groups were given a variety of multimedia enriched instructional materials; 54 students were exposed to audio visual materials, 53 used printed multicolour, and 54 printed plain as a control group. Pre and post tests were used to assess students' knowledge of the given set of materials before and after the experimental treatments. Post test result scores and multimedia enrichment were used as dependent and independent variables respectively.The audio visual group was found to perform significantly superior (56.76%) than the printed plain (p= 0.001); audio aided group performance was significantly higher (52.31%) than the printed plain (p=0.05); printed multicolour group performed higher (49.57%) than the printed plain group (45.54%). The study recommends the use of multimedia technology in the preparation and use of ODL instructional materials. The study further recommends studies on teachers' competence in developing, embedding and using multimedia enriched instructional materials.