Title:
LEVERAGING INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY FOR TRADITIONAL AND NONTRADITIONAL STUDENTS: QUEST FOR QUALITY EDUCATION

Authors:
Bernard Wiafe Akaadom (PhD)

Abstract:
There has been a steady growth in the provision of technology tools and related infrastructure in schools in recent times. This growth has been necessitated by the increasing acceptance that technology helps enhance both teaching and learning to improve the performances of students who are taught with this technology. To be able to bring advanced technologies to teaching and learning, most educational institutions, especially in Africa have failed to tackle one problem that is perhaps the most important. The issue is “what is the impact that technology is having on the learning styles and capabilities of the students exposed to it?” This study investigated if there were any differences in the way traditional (conventional) and non-traditional (nonconventional) students perceive the impact of the use of instructional technology on their understanding and retention of content material taught using technology. A non-experimental descriptive design was adopted where a stratified random sampling technique was used to select two colleges of education and three senior high schools for the study. A sample size of 146 students was drawn using a simple random sampling technique for which subjects responded to a carefully designed semi-structured instrument. It was found out that there was no statistically significant difference between traditional and non-traditional students in making better grades. However, there was a significant difference between traditional and non-traditional student populations in terms of remembering information, clarity of content and testable material signaling a difference in the way traditional and non-traditional students perceive the use of instructional technology on their understanding and retention of information.

Keywords:
: Instructional technology, information, retention, traditional students, non-traditional students.

DOI:
http://dx.doi.org/10.37500/IJESSR.2021.4401