ABSTRACT
This study established the
relationship between the Information Technology skills of Secretarial Teachers
in Nigerian Colleges of Education and their ability to utilize the Internet for
effective teaching. 250 Secretarial Teachers drawn from 58 Accredited Nigerian
Colleges of Education responded to the questionnaire that was divided into 4
parts. The questionnaire was used to obtained information on the respondents’
Bio-data and computer use background, Teacher Information Technology Skill
Acquisition Competence (TITSC), Teacher Information Technology Skills Usage
(TITSU), Teacher Information Technology Internet Knowledge (TITIK), and The
extent of usage of Internet information to teach the Secretarial courses. Data
were analyzed using descriptive statistics and Pearson Product Moment
Correlation Coefficientat 0.01 level of significance. Using Choudhury’s Range,
there was a moderate positive correlation or relationship between the IT skills
of Secretarial Teachers and the ability to use internet to access information
for effective teaching. The implication of this result is that, if the
secretarial teachers are more competent in their IT skills, then the more will
they be enabled to access information from the Internet for effective teaching.
In this study it was found that the secretarial teachers were not knowledgeable
in the use of some vital and important Internet instructional delivery tools.
Secretarial Teachers in the Nigeria Colleges of Education lacked some vital
Information Technology skills such as, ability to operate data base, ability to
extract relevant information using integrated software packages, ability to
extract information using electronic mails and application software, ability to
use voice recognition system and ability to operate other different
technologies and appreciate their benefits. It was therefore recommended that,
National Commission of Colleges of Education should bring together all the
secretarial education stakeholders: curriculum experts, the teachers,
representatives of ministries and industries; to revisit the existing
curriculum. The integration of latest Information Technology practices and the
requisite Internet skills which the Secretarial Teachers lack, will reposition
Secretarial Studies programme to meet the challenges of an IT driven classroom.
This study was to establish the relationship between
Information Technology (IT) skills of Secretarial Teachers in Nigerian Colleges
of Education and their ability to utilize the Internet for Effective Lecture
Delivery. Many secretarial teachers possess some degree of IT skills but these
skills were not utilized to access information from the Internet, thereby not
making them to be current and innovative within the mainstream of classroom
teaching and learning. The major objective of the study is to discover how to
fill the gap that existed between Information Technology Skills possessed by
Secretarial Teachers in Nigerian Colleges of Education and the actual usage of
the skills to access Internet for information that will assist them in
effective Classroom Delivery. Four Research Questions and four Null Hypotheses
were generated for this research study. The research design employed for this
research study was the descriptive survey research. The Population for the
study was 250 Secretarial Teachers drawn from 58 Accredited Nigerian Colleges
of Education. No sampling was done because of the small size of the target
population. However, out of the 250 Secretarial Teachers, only 225 Secretarial
Teachers responded to the questionnaire that was divided into 4 parts. The
questionnaire was used to obtained information on the respondents’ Bio-data and
computer use background, Teacher Information Technology Skill Acquisition
Competence (TITSC), Teacher Information Technology Skills Usage (TITSU),
Teacher Information Technology Internet Knowledge (TITIK), and The extent of
usage of Internet information to teach the Secretarial courses. Data were
analyzed using mean and standard deviation for answering the five research
questions, while t-test was used to test for differences, and Pearson Product
Moment Correlation Coefficient was used to test for relationships of the null
hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The results of the study shows lack
of basic learning experiences needed to adequately equip the teachers with
ability to download and upload quality information and teach students how to do
that. Owing to the lack of these IT skills therefore, the teachers were not
capable in accessing Internet by using some Information Technology facilities
to get vital information for effective classroom delivery. Though there was a
significant relationship between Information Technology skills acquisition and
classroom delivery. As weak as the relationship was that was discovered in the
study, it was only effective on Office Practice, a course out of other courses
offered in the Secretarial programme. The study concluded that, anyone that
must be a proficient, versatile, current, effective and efficient teacher of
office education in any of the Nigerian Colleges of Education, must be computer
literate, highly skillful and innovative, and should demonstrate how to utilize
and develop Information Technology in order to remain relevant in the modern
day world teaching and research. Recommendations included the need for NCCE to
integrate the current practices of Information Technology into the curriculum
of the NCE secretarial education of the Nigerian Colleges of Education, and the
need for an urgent retraining of the Secretarial Teachers in line with current
Information Technology operations and societal needs to augment for an up-date
of curriculum content.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background to the Study
The Internet is used in diverse
fields, such as business, entertainment, education, communication, medicine,
defence, engineering and sports (Okebukola, 2008). Information plays a key role
in the formation and structure of societies, no matter how small. Therefore,
with the introduction of computers and communications with their management to
yield information Technology, resulting into their remarkable capabilities of
storing, processing and transmitting information, there was bound to be
profound societal impacts. Information Technology has the world’s largest broad
band which embraces all networks has changed the face of the world we live in.
Information Technology enables people to communicate with family, friends and
colleagues around the world instantaneously, gain access to global libraries,
information resources, and numerous opportunities, hence Information Technology
must have brought improvement in the Nigerian educational sector (Adeshina,
2007).
Information Technology has had
more impact on administrative service and the private sector as they are used
for admissions, registrations, fee payment, purchasing than on the fundamentals
of classroom teaching and learning. In view of this fact, the Information
Technology is yet to revolutionize the classroom. According to Gambari and
Okoli (2007), it is changing the learning experiences of students by relaxing
time and space constraints as well as providing easier access to information
on-line, journals and e-books. The Nigerian Colleges of Education in Nigeria
have been established to provide professionally qualified non-graduate teachers
who will teach in the primary and secondary schools of Nigeria. The Certificate
awarded is Nigeria Certificate in Education (NCE) in various disciplines which
cut across Social Sciences, Languages, Sciences, Vocational and Technical
Education. Secretarial Education is one of such courses taught within the
domains of the Vocational and Technical Education, particularly in the Business
Education programme. It is an option that attempts to impart practical and
applied skills as well as the basic scientific technologies so that the
recipients can enter into secretarial occupation and advance in it.
With this document put in place
for implementation in the Nigerian Colleges of Education, acquisition of IT
competencies and ability to utilize such competencies became imperative.
Therefore, if secretarial teachers are to graduate students that would be
relevant in the secretarial world of work, they must possess and utilize these
skills effectively.
Although provisions have been
made for teachers to acquire Information Technology skills, so as to qualify to
teach in the entire Business Education Programme, Computer Literacy is a requirement.
However, it is not clear whether all the secretarial teachers have the Information
Technology skills, hence the need to assess the level of their IT skills and to
see how much of it they have been able to use it to access information from the
Internet for effective teaching delivery and production of IT compliant
products.
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