Audiovisual Education

Audiovisual education or multimedia-based education (MBE) is instruction where particular attention is paid to the audio and visual presentation of the material with the goal of improving comprehension and retention.

After the use of training films and other visual aids during World War II, audiovisual technology gradually developed in sophistication and its use became more widespread in educational establishments such as schools, colleges, universities, museums and galleries, as well as at tourist destinations, such as the purpose-built circular cinema, Arromanches 360 [1], at Arromanches-les-Bains, which shows a 360° film presentation of the Normandy landings.

Children learn best by observing and copying the behaviors of adults. It is therefore evident that learning is more effective when sensory experiences are stimulated. These include pictures, slides, radios, videos and other audiovisual tools. According to the Webster dictionary, audio-visual aids is defined as ‘training or educational materials directed at both the senses of hearing and the sense of sight, films, recordings, photographs, etc. used in classroom instructions, library collections or the likes”. The concept of audiovisual aids is not new and can be traced back to seventeenth century when John Amos Comenius (1592-1670), a Bohemian educator, introduced pictures as teaching aids in his book Orbis Sensualium Pictus (“picture of the Sensual World”) that was illustrated with 150 drawings of everyday life. Similarly, Jean Rousseau (17122-1788) and JH Pestalozzi (1756-1827) advocated the use of visual and play materials in teaching. More recently, audiovisual aids were also widely used during and after World War II by the armed service. The successful use of picture and other visual aids in U.S armed forces during World War II proved the effectiveness of instructional tools. There are various types of audiovisual materials ranging from filmstrips, microforms, slides, projected opaque materials, tape recording and flashcards. In the current digital world, audiovisual aids have grown exponentially with several multimedia such as educational DVDs, PowerPoint, television educational series, youtube, and other online materials. The goal of audio-visual aids is to enhance teacher’s ability to present the lesson in simple, effective and easy to understand for the students. Audiovisual material make learning more permanent since students use more than one sense. It is important to create awareness for the state and federal ministry of education as policy makers in secondary schools of the need to inculcate audiovisual resource as main teaching pedagogy in curricula. The outcome is to promote the audiovisual material in secondary schools because they lack the resource to produce them. The visual instruction makes abstract ideas more concrete to the learners. This is to provide a basis for schools to understand the important roles in encouraging and supporting the use of audiovisual resource. In addition, studies have shown that there is significant difference between the use and non-use of audiovisual material in teaching and learning.

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Wikipedia