Drama-in-Education, Multimedia Technology and Childhood Language Curriculum: The University Staff School (USS) Benin City, Edo State Experience

Abstract

The continuous evolutions in information and communication technologies (ICTs) fields and the quest for educators to improve service delivery have opened new channels and opportunities to enhance teaching and educational methods. On one hand, these may improve the abilities of educators to present information in interactive and mediaenhanced formats, relative to traditional methods. This may help pupils or learners by offering them the information in channels and methods that can be easier to understand, deal with and retrieve. On the other hand, offering those alternative methods can be helpful, particularly for children and pupils in rural areas where they can have virtual or remote instructors. This article investigated the impact of utilizing multimedia technologies on enhancing, or not, the effectiveness of teaching pupils at early stages in the University Staff School (USS) in Benin City (using Primary V class arms). The study is anchored in the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning that upholds three main assumptions: there are two separate channels (auditory and visual) for processing information; there is limited channel capacity; and that learning is an active process of filtering, selecting, organizing, and integrating information. The Brainwave Video Anthology – a collection of English language packed with English alphabets, words and sound ‘pronunciation’ was retrieved from YouTube to test students’ ability to understand English letters, words and pronunciation “language skills.” Two groups were selected from the school; based on their class distribution, where one group was taught the subject in basic English using the multimedia technology (YouTube video) developed for this purpose and the second class was taught the same subject using traditional methods of teaching (i.e., direct pupils-to-child instruction, board, etc.). Results showed that in teaching language skills at this age, using programmes or multimedia-enhanced methods of teaching can be effective in getting pupils’ attention, especially when cartoon characters are used. Hence, the study recommended the introduction and use of multimedia alongside the already existing dramain- education (D-I-E) in the early childhood curriculum in Nigerian schools.