The study assessed how students and course tutors on distance education programmes of the College of DistanceEducation, University of Cape Coast appraised their study centre coordinators’ performance in terms of humanrelations, behaviour, organising teaching and learning facilities; and handling complaints. This type of appraisal,where students and tutors representing customers and subordinates respectively, is usually referred to as the360-feedback method in human resource management. Concurrent embedded study design from the pragmatists’epistemic approach was adopted for the study. Simple random and purposive sampling technique were respectivelyused to sample 1228 final year students and 217 course tutors from 53 study centres; and five coordinators from eachof the three Zones across the ten regions of Ghana for triangulation purposes. Data was analysed with descriptivestatistics, independent t-test and a one-way between-groups analysis of variance. The study found that coordinators’behavior and human relations were rated higher as compared to complaints handling and organising study centreactivities. This was blamed on lack of capacity to address most of students and tutors challenges; and teaching loadof coordinators. It was recommended that the management of College of Distance Education should increase thecapacity of coordinators for district and regional study centres as well as the Zones in terms of resources andtechnology to be able to take immediate steps to solve students and tutors’ complaints.

The study compared the effects of Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI) on the achievement of Junior High School (J.H.S) students in Pre-Technical skills after exposing them to CAI and the traditional methods of instruction. The theoretical framework for the study is that people learn most things better through construction of computer games or multimedia composition rather than through traditional methods of directly teaching content. The study involved 59 students from two schools in Kumasi Metropolis. Twenty eight of the students formed the CAI group while 31formed the traditional group. Quasi-experimental design was used for the study. Structured pre-test and post-test achievement test with a reliability coefficient = 0.74 and 0.75 respectively were used to collect data. The data was analyzed using Predictive Analysis Software (PASW) version 18. The study revealed that the CAI group performed better than the traditional method of instruction group. However, there was no statistically significant difference between the achievements levels of the two groups. It was recommended that CAI should be introduced in the teaching of Pre-Technical skills throughout the country.

The study examined gender dimension in the development of effective teaching skills among distance education (DE) students. The conceptual framework for the study is gender mainstreaming which centres on pluralistic approach to diversity issues among both men and women. A longitudinal developmental research design was used for the study. A sample size of 376 distance education students made up of 173(46.01%) female and 203 (53.99%) male were purposefully selected from 5 regional study centres of College of Distance Education, University of Cape Coast (UCC) across Ghana. Data was collected using the Teaching Practice (Practicum) Assessment Form 'A' of UCC. The two research questions sought to find out the performance of male and female DE students on On-Centre Teaching Practice (OCTP) and School-Based Teaching Practice (SBTP) respectively. Five hypotheses were also formulated to guide the study. Results of the study revealed that the teaching skills acquired by both male and female DE students during OCTP and SBTP were good. However, a statistically significant difference exists between the teaching skills acquired by male and female DE students. Similarly, gender was found to have effect on the acquisition of teaching skills. It is recommended that all policy makers in the area of teaching practice should be mindful of gender issues in the development of teaching skills. Institutions involved in training teachers using distance education mode should stress the four levels of effective teaching skills assessed in this paper for meaningful practical teaching during teaching practice.

No abstract

This study explores equity in the provision of secondary education to public and private junior high school products in Ghana. The purpose of the study was to document the role that gender, programme offered performance score, type of JHS attended, and governing authority of schools play in the seeming inequity in the selection process. The key findings showed that there is a statistically significant difference between public and private JHS graduates in terms of gaining access to SHS. However, the difference was not gender based. It was also found that the level of access to SHS opened to JHS graduates differ according to whether the school is a single sex or mixed sex institution and also the choice of programme. Finally, the study indicated that there is no statistically significant difference between well endowed and less endowed SHS in terms of gaining admission into them. It is, therefore, recommended that efforts directed towards bridging the equity gap should be vigorously pursued.