The study was on the impact of observational techniques on the academic performance of Home Economics students in Federal Colleges of Education North-West Geo-Political District, Nigeria. A danger was perceived in the evaluation of students' academic performance due to over-dependence on examination result as a true measure of students' achievement which in most cases led to producing graduates that could not depend the quality of their results. Six specific objectives were formulated for the study some of which are; to examine the evaluation methods used by Home Economics lecturers to determine the academic performance of their students, to examine the relationship among Home Economics lecturers educational qualification, years of teaching experience and ranks and their opinion on effect of observational technique on students academic performance. Six (6) research questions and six (6) hypotheses were also formulated, and the population for the study were two hundred and eighty two (282). Fifty one (51) lecturers and one hundred and ninety (190) 300 level Home Economics students from five Federal Colleges of Education were sampled for the study. The instrument used for data collection were the mean academic performance of students in the control and experimental groups as well as a designed questionnaire for the lecturers. Analysis of variance and independent t-test were the statistical tools used to test the null hypotheses. Four null hypotheses were accepted and two were rejected at 0.05 alpha level of significance. The major findings of the study revealed that: (i) Lecturers mostly use tests and examination to determine the academic performance of the students (ii) lecturers educational qualification, years of teaching experience and ranks does not affect their opinion on effect of observational techniques on academic performance of students (iii) Students academic performance was higher in the experimental group and less for the control group. Based on the findings in the study, it was recommended that: (i) Home Economics lecturers should in addition to tests and examinations, include observational technique in their evaluation procedures as it would enable them and their students to be more involved, thereby producing more responsible students. (ii) Refresher courses should be given to Home Economics lecturers within each educational qualification stage in order to make them more conversant and up-to-date with evaluation procedures as well as evaluation methods. This can be done through seminars and workshop by experts in measurement and evaluation (iii) Students should be exposed to observational techniques as an evaluation device which can motivates and challenge students to be more concerned about their own learning and help them to perform better academically.