Effect of Instructional Medium on Students’ Performance: A Comparison of Reading and Oral Instruction in Nigeria

Abstract

Nigeria has a rich oral tradition. In the pre-literate Nigerian culture, knowledge and wisdom were shared through the oral methods of proverbs and storytelling. However, in modern formal education, knowledge is communicated largely through text. The purpose of this paper was to compare students’ performance based on these instructional mediums. Two studies using a between-subjects experimental design were conducted among Nigerian university students. Both studies included two conditions: lecture (oral) and reading (text). In both conditions, the same content was presented. In the reading condition, students read the content as an article whereas in the lecture condition, students listened to the content as a lecture. Post-test examination performance was then compared. Both experiments found that reading resulted in considerably higher academic performance than lecturing.Keywords: Instructional medium; Curriculum innovation; Teaching and learning