This research investigated the effect of asynchronous instructional strategy on learning motivation and scores of postgraduate students in Advanced Educational Research in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. The research sample comprised 120 postgraduate students drawn through convenience sampling technique from a population of 204 master degree students in the Faculty of Education in the 2018/2019 academic session. A pretest-posttest non-randomized quasi-experimental research design was used. Two research questions and two hypotheses guided the study. A 50-item ‘’Advanced Educational Research Test’’ and a 10-item ‘’Learning Motivation Questionnaire’’ were developed by the researchers for data collection. The research questions were answered using mean and analysis of covariance was employed to test the hypotheses at .05 alpha level. The reliability indices of the two instruments were estimated using Kuder-Richardson and Cronbach alpha methods respectively and the reliability indices for the instruments were 0.74 and 0.78 respectively. The findings of the study revealed that students who learnt through the asynchronous instructional strategy were better motivated and scored higher in Advanced Educational Research than students who learnt through lecture method. It was concluded that the asynchronous instructional strategy was very effective in motivating and improving advanced educational research scores of postgraduate students compared to the lecture method. It was recommended that the National Universities Commission should set up modalities necessary for adopting e-learning technologies like the asynchronous instructional strategy in Nigerian universities for the teaching and learning of all courses because it improves motivation and achievement of students.
Keywords: Advanced Educational Research, Learning Motivation, Scores, asynchronous instructional strategy
