A comparative study of traditional and multimedia supported techniques for imparting communication skills at the tertiary level

Abstract

This study was conducted with the main purpose of comparing the effect of both newlinetraditional and multimedia supported instructions on students perceptions and newlineperformance at university level Subjects in the control group were taught through newlinetraditional facetoface instruction whereas subjects in the experimental group were newlinetaught through multimedia technology The pretest posttest and multimedia newlineperception questionnaires were administered to measure the prior knowledge learning newlinegains and perception of students towards multimedia technology respectively In this newlinestudy two sets of questionnaires have been employed Pre intervention perception newlinequestionnaire was given before exposing them to the intervention program while post newlineintervention perception questionnaire was given after exposing them to the newlineintervention program In order to measure the efficacy of two identified applications newlineof multimedia technology namely instructional video and power point two different newlineintervention programs have been designed in this study The programs are called newlineMultimedia Enabled Presentation Skills Improvement Program MEPSIP and newlineMultimedia Enabled Writing Instructions Program MEWIP To ascertain proper newlineimplementation and thus credibility of the findings classroom observations were newlineconducted during the intervention newlineThe quantitative approach was used to compare the test scores of two groups Mean newlinevariance and standard deviation were used for descriptive statistics At analysis the newlinehypothesis are tested by using independent sample t test and paired sample ttest newlineStatistics calculated using SPSS Student Version 160 for Windows included newlinehistograms on the pre and posttest scores Levenes test for equality of variance on newlinethe pre and posttest and survey scores and ttest statistics on the pre and posttest newlineand survey scores newlineThe results from the presentation skills test indicate that in almost all the sections newlineexperimental group outperformed the control group except one part of organization of newlinecontent main body The findings indicate that video supported ins