Effect of Blended Instructional Strategy on Commerce Students Academic Performance in Secondary Schools in Uyo Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State-Nigeria

Abstract

Teaching and learning are dynamic activities that are predicated on a number of factors. The pedagogical strategy used determines the effectiveness of the teacher and students’ academic performance. This study was therefore on the effect of blended instructional strategy on Commerce students’ academic performance in secondary schools in Uyo Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State-Nigeria. Three research questions and three null hypotheses were raised to direct the study. The study adopted the pretest- postest non randomized quasi experimental design. Diffusion of Innovative theory and the Material-First-Rationale-Model were used to develop Commerce Instructional Package for experimentation. Two schools out of the 13 secondary schools in Uyo Local Government Area met the requirement for selection and were used for the study. The sample size of 240 students in both the urban and rural schools were selected and used for the study using the simple random sampling technique. An instructional package on Commerce was developed and used in treating the experimental groups while the control groups were taught using the expository teaching strategy. Both the control and the experimental groups were pretested before treatment. Commerce Performance Test was used to examine the effect of the package and the difference in students’ performance. All the students in both control and the experimental groups were post-tested. Their scripts were marked and their scores used for analysis with the help of mean and Analysis of Co-variance. Results of the analysis showed a significant difference in academic performance of Commerce students taught with blended instructional strategy and those taught with expository method. There was also a significant difference in academic performance of male and female students as well as those students in urban and rural school location. Based on these results, the following recommendations were made to improve the teaching of Commerce and academic performance of students namely that blended instruction should be adopted in teaching Commerce and that in-service training, seminars and workshops should be organised by Government and other stake holders in Education to update the knowledge of teachers in the use of ICTs and web-based instructional strategies among other recommendations.