Instructional materials
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Instructional materials, also known as teaching materials, learning materials, or teaching/learning materials (TLM), are any collection of materials including animate and inanimate objects and human and non-human resources that a teacher may use in teaching and learning situations to help achieve desired learning objectives. Instructional materials may aid a student in concretizing a learning experience so as to make learning more exciting, interesting and interactive. They are tools used in instructional activities, which include active learning and assessment. The term encompasses all the materials and physical means an instructor might use to implement instruction and facilitate students achievement of instructional objectives.
Background
The value of instructional materials as a pedagogical aid can be seen in Vachel Lindsay's poem "Euclid":
Old Euclid drew a circle On a sand-beach, long ago. He bounded and enclosed it With angles thus and so. His set of solemn greybeards Nodded and argued much Of arc and of circumference Diameter and such. A silent child stood by them From morning until noon, Because they drew such charming Round pictures of the moon.
Types of instructional materials
Instructional materials can be classified by type, including print, visual, and audiovisual, among others:
| Textbooks, pamphlets, handouts, study guides, manuals, blackboard and whiteboard | |
| Audio | Cassettes, microphones, podcasts, CDs |
| Visual | Charts, real objects, photographs, transparencies |
| Audiovisual | Slides, tapes, films, filmstrips, television, video, multimedia, DVDs |
| Electronic interactive | Computers, graphing calculators, tablets |
Evaluation of instructional materials
Peer-Reviewed Instructional Materials Online (PRIMO) Committee
The Peer-Reviewed Instructional Materials Online (PRIMO) Committee "'promotes and shares peer-reviewed instructional materials created by librarians to teach people about discovering, accessing and evaluating information in networked environments.' In doing so, it reviews librarian-created online tutorials dealing with information literacy and critical thinking skills, and highlights the highest-caliber projects through its "Site of the Month" posts on the ACRL Instruction Section blog. PRIMO's goal is to provide librarians quality tutorials for instructional use on a variety of topics in order to save time, effort and cost. PRIMO accepts non-promotional online instructional material intended for undergraduate or graduate-level audiences emphasizing quality over comprehensiveness.
Instructional Materials Evaluation Tool
"Student Achievement Partners is a nonprofit organization that assembles educators and researchers to design actions based on evidence that will substantially improve student achievement." The tool provided by the organization is the Textbook Alignment and Adaptations Instructional Materials Evaluation Tool. The goal of this tool is to assist in evaluation textbooks or series of textbooks for alignment to the Common Core State Standards Initiative.