Effect of project-based teaching methods on business education students’ academic performance in principles of accounting in universities in South-West, Nigeria

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of project-based teaching methods on business education students’ academic performance in principles of accounting in universities in South-west, Nigeria. The study has two purposes, research questions and hypotheses. Quasi-experimental pre- Test post-test control group design was adopted for the study. The population of the study was 370 Business Education students offering principles of accounting in universities in the south-west. This comprises 200 level for the course is part of curriculum content at this level in South-West, Nigeria universities. The two universities were selected using purposive sampling technique. Random sampling was used to select two universities. The study used Principles of Accounting Performance Test (PAPT) pre-test and post-test with instructional package designed by researcher for collection data. The instrument was subjected to face and content validity by three experts with a Cronbach reliability coefficient of 0.74. Data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviation for the research questions and Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) for testing the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The study found among others that project based teaching method had positive effect on the academic performance of Business Education students in principles of accounting, there was a significant main effect of treatment of project –based on academic performance of universities Business Education students in principles of accounting (F= 135.759; P = .000) and that there was no significant gender effect of project -based method on academic performance of universities Business Education students in principles of accounting (F= 20.356;P = 0.000).It was recommended among others that papers, journals and book publications should be made available on effective usage of project-based teaching method for academic improvement, mutual cooperation among students and students’ involvement in the learning process. Business education students regardless of their gender should be exposed to project -based teaching method of teaching principles of accounting. This is because the method is beneficial to both sexes.