The Role of Mass Media in Educational Development in Nigeria (a Case Study of NTA Enugu)
CHAPTER ONE
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
- To enlighten the educational systems in Nigerian through the mass media.
- To make the students know the value of television.
- To actualize the claim that day students have more access to television than boarders.
- To know the total number of people that has access to television sets.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
Many researches have been conducted in the field of Educational Broadcasting by prominent researchers.
Writing under the heading “Broadcasting Katz and George Wedell indicate that broadcasting has, in the past few decades closely identified itself with education as part of the nation building process in both the developed and the developing countries. This because.
There is a direct link between the creation of a communication, system that can reach out the population of a country at a scale previously unheard of and the use of such a system for educating the population in ways thoughts useful by the government.
In the 1950s and 60, some developed countries sent into educational broadcasting. They were very enthusiastic about this new educational technology. They wished to modernize traditional educational methods because they believed and hoped that less labour intensive teaching methods would help reduce the unit cost of educational opportunities throughout Europe and North America.
Both these hopes were recognized to be applicable to the less developed countries where educational expansion was regarded as the key to national development on all forms, and in which educational resources were very scare.
These hopes of modernizing traditional education methods and reducing the unit cost of education were unfortunately not realized. The reasons behind the failure will be discussed later.
In their research Elihu Katz and George Wedell discovered that there are two categories of educational broadcasting the extensive and intensive educational broadcasting.
The extensive educational broadcasting includes all types of programming that are intended in one way or the other to encourage greater understanding or a change of attitude among the general audience. This kind of educational broadcasting requires little or no preparation on the part of the audience.
The intensive educational broadcasting on the other hand is the type that make use of radio or television, or both to carry out formal education as goes on in school of the country concerned. It makes provision for specific programmes material or lecture to be delivered at a specific time on a stated day to pupils in particular class, in all schools of a given educational system. (“Science for schools falls under this category.
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Constraints in money and time have greatly narrowed down the scope of this study.
Firstly, the study as indicated above, is limited to one formal Educational programme “Science for schools”.
Secondly, data collection is also limited to three schools in Enugu. Federal Government College, Enugu National grammar school Nike Enugu and city Girls Secondary, School, Enugu.
Research Method
The social science research method of the sample survey has been utilized in this study.
The first step was to select a representative sample of schools in Enugu Urban. This was done with the aid of the single random sampling techniques. The sample faraction used ws 1/2 . a list of all the secondary schools in Enugu was compiled and unnumbered serially.
Every third number was chosen and so three schools. Federal government college Enugu, National Grammar school Nike Enugu and City Girls Secondary school Enugu were selected.
The next step was to select a representative sample of students in the selected schools. This again was done through simple random sampling techniques. A list of all the students in classes three, four and five studying science in the three selected schools was complied and was numbered serially. The sample fraction is 1/5 from the lists, every fifty name was selected and in the end two hundred and fifty students were selected.
CHAPTER FOUR
PRESENTATION AND INTERPRETING OF DATA
TABLE II Indicates that out of the 200 students who completed the questionnaires, 95 or 45.5% of them are day students while 105 or 52.5% are boarders.
The table also shows that 100 students have access to television sets.
Out of this number, 80 or 72.7% ( of all students who have access to television sets) are day students while 30 or 27.3% of this number are boarders.
CHAPTER FIVE
CONCLUSION
This study looked at television and its contribution to the educational advancement of Nigeria, with particular reference to “Science for schools”. A formal educational programme produced by the educational unity of NTA channel 8. Enugu.
From this study, it was discovered that “Science for schools” is popular with its target audience, contrary to the expectations of the research. Table II, lends credence to this deduction. But this programme would have been more popular if all students boarders and day students had access to television sets. Table II shows that 72% of all students who have access to TV sets are day students while boarders constitute only 27.3%.
Concerning the thirty minutes duration of the progrmme, 60% of the respondents indicate its inadequacy. They went on to suggest a duration ranging from 45 minutes to 2 hours.
However, psychologists and Broadcasting experts know better. According to them any programme that involves mainly talks should be as short as possible.
If it is lengthy the listeners or viewers will become bored. Actually one will not blame the students for asking foe more time because they do not really know what they are asking for.
RECOMMENDATIONS
More TV sets should be provided in many boarding schools to enable students that live in schools to have the opportunity to watch the programme “Science for school, since it helps in the educational advancement of the country. The time should be improved, the 30 minutes for the programme is not adequate, I suggest one hour for the programme so that people, especially the students will gain more from the programme.
The programme should also be shifted to Saturdays when most students are expected to be less busy and when most students are expected to be at home. This will also increase their interest and participation.
In this study, it must be pointed out, that they were some serious limitations in terms of finance, time, material, and logistic. This study is only limited to only one medium of mass media alone which is the television. Because of these problems, I will encourage more research into this area of academic pursuit even in the radio-what do you suggest?
REFERNCES
- JOHN COLDMAN: Mass media and the society published by pan publishers (1983) P.97.
- Peterson Henry:Radio and Television study. Published by Lps (1979) P.34
- Alan Hankcook Producing for Educational mass media P.13
- Aspinal Richard Radio programme production P.87.
- Benson Clifford Introduction to mass communication
