Effect of Edutainment Instructional Approach on Students’ Academic Achievement and Retention in Building Technology in Technical Colleges

Abstract

The teaching and learning of building technology in technical colleges seems to be characterised by poor academic achievement and retention of concepts. This called for the search for innovative teaching approaches like the edutainment instructional approach. The study was therefore conducted to determine the effect of edutainment instructional approach on students’ academic achievement and retention in building technology in technical colleges. Two research questions guided the study and two null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study adopted the quasi-experimental design in which there were pre-test and post-test in the experimental and control groups. The population of the study comprised all the 946 senior technical II (ST2) students offering building technology in the six public technical colleges in Akwa Ibom State. Purposive sampling technique was used to select four technical colleges in the study area. Three instrument namely: edutainment lesson plans, conventional lesson plans and building technology achievement test (BTAT) were used in the study. Three experts validated the instrument. Test-retest reliability of the instrument which yielded an index of 0.87 obtained using Pearson product moment correlation coefficient. The data collected for the study were analysed using the mean scores and standard deviation for answering the research questions while hypotheses were tested with the analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) at 0.05 level of significance. The study found that: the edutainment instructional approach enhanced students’ academic achievement and retention in building technology more than the conventional lecture method. There was significant difference in the academic achievement and retention of students in building technology between the two groups. The significance was attributed to the experimental group which obtained a higher mean score in the post-test and retention test. It was recommended that: teachers of building technology in technical colleges in Akwa Ibom State should adopt edutainment instructional approach in the teaching of building technology courses in order to enhance students’ academic achievement and retention in building technology.