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ABSTRACT
The study assessed the perceived effectiveness of individual teaching method among cassava farmers in Edo State, Nigeria. The specific objective were to; describe the socio-economic characteristics of cassava farmers in the study area; identify the individual teaching method available to the farmers; identify proven technologies and practices disseminated to and adopted by respondents through the individual teaching methods; determine respondents, accessed, most preferred and perceived effective individual teaching method; ascertain sources through which respondents access and prefer to schedule individual teaching method; and determine the factors affecting the effectiveness of individual teaching methods
A simple random sampling procedure was used to collect data from 150 respondents with the aid of a structured questionnaire. The results reveals that majority (55.2%) of the respondents are female, majority (40.3%) were between 50 years above and were married (70.1%) and majority (62.7%) had a household size of between 6 and 10 persons. The result also showed that higher proportion of the respondents (37.3%) had secondary school education and majority (79.9%) had contact with extension agents. The result also revealed that farm and home visits (mean = 2.81), telephone calls (mean = 2.57) and result demonstration (mean 2.60) were the preferred method by the respondents in the study area. The use of clean planting materials (mean 2.86), improved varieties (2.89), weeding (2.75), standard spacing (2.69) and recommended planting material (2.60) was effective in adopting new technologies, telephone calls (mean 2.57) was the only teaching method perceived to be important to the respondents. Inadequate funds (mean = 3.20), and inadequate inputs (mean = 3.12) were the serious problems faced by the respondents in technology adoption in the study area. There were no significant relationship between the socio-economic characteristics of cassava farmers and their perception to adoption of technologies through individual teaching methods (r = -0.086) at 0.05 level of significance.
The study concludes that most farmers are positively disposed to adopting new technologies transmitted through agricultural extension services. The study recommends that Extension agent should improve on the quality of service rendered to the farmers through more frequent visit and training to improve their level of awareness and there is a need to employ and train more extension workers in order to create a balance in the existing disproportionate ratio of extension agents to farm families so that many farmers are helped to improve agricultural productivity and their standard of living.
