Utilization of Interactive Instructional Media in the Delivery of Distance Education in South-East, Nigeria.

The purpose of the study was to determine the learners perception on the extent to which interactive instructional media are actually utilized in the delivery of distance Education programmes. The study was carried out in the south East Nigeria. A survey Research Design was adopted for the study. Aresearch question and two hypotheses guided the study. 47,084 students of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) and National Teachers Institute (NTI) Distance Education programmes in Abia and Enugu State study centres constituted the population for the study. With a stratified random sampling technique, a sample size of 393 distance learners from the NOUN and NTI centres were sampled and studied. A researcher designed questionnaire was used for data collection. The Instrument was validated by three experts; two in curriculum and instruction and one in measurement and Evaluation. The reliability co-efficient of the instrument was 0.76 obtained through Cronbach Alpha Method. The research questions was tested using mean with standard deviation while the hypotheses were tested using t-test statistics. The data analysis revealed under-utilization of the studied interactive instructional media. There was no significant difference between the mean ratings of the Abia and Enugu study centre students responses, but there was a significant difference between the mean ratings of the Noun and NTI students responses. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others, that awareness, knowledge and skills acquisition training programmes and utilization of interactive instructional media should be severally organized to enable distance learning facilitators exploit the immense benefits and opportunities being offered by the current advancement in information and communication Technology.