Instructional materials, also known as teaching materials, learning materials, or teaching/learning materials (TLM),[1] 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.[2] The term encompasses all the materials and physical means an instructor might use to implement instruction and facilitate students achievement of instructional objectives.
The value of instructional materials as a pedagogical aid can be seen in Vachel Lindsay's poem "Euclid":
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 |
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.[3] [4] 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.
"Student Achievement Partners is a nonprofit organization that assembles educators and researchers to design actions based on evidence that will substantially improve student achievement."[5] The tool provided by the organization is the Textbook Alignment and Adaptations Instructional Materials Evaluation Tool.[6] The goal of this tool is to assist in evaluation textbooks or series of textbooks for alignment to the Common Core State Standards Initiative.
