The Relationship between the Information Technology Skills Acquired by Secretarial Teachers in Nigeria Colleges of Education and Their Utilization of Internet for Effective Teaching

Abstract

This study established the relationship between the Information Technology skills acquired by Secretarial Teachersin Nigerian Colleges of Education and their utilization of Internet for effective teaching. 250 Secretarial Teachersdrawn from 58 Accredited Nigerian Colleges of Education responded to the questionnaire that was divided into 4parts. The questionnaire was used to obtained information on the respondents’ Bio-data and computer usebackground, Teacher Information Technology Skill Acquisition Competence (TITSC), Teacher InformationTechnology Skills Usage (TITSU), Teacher Information Technology Internet Knowledge (TITIK), and The extent ofusage of Internet information to teach the Secretarial courses. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics andPearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficientat 0.01 level of significance. Using Choudhury’s Range, there was amoderate positive correlation or relationship between the IT skills of Secretarial Teachers and the ability to useinternet to access information for effective teaching. The implication of this result is that, if the secretarial teachers aremore competent in their IT skills, then the more will they be enabled to access information from the Internet foreffective teaching. In this study it was found that the secretarial teachers were not knowledgeable in the use of somevital and important Internet instructional delivery tools. Secretarial Teachers in the Nigeria Colleges of Educationlacked some vital Information Technology skills such as, ability to operate data base, ability to extract relevantinformation using integrated software packages, ability to extract information using electronic mails and applicationsoftware, ability to use voice recognition system and ability to operate other different technologies and appreciatetheir benefits. It was therefore recommended that, National Commission of Colleges of Education should bringtogether all the secretarial education stakeholders: curriculum experts, the teachers, representatives of ministries andindustries; to revisit the existing curriculum. The integration of latest Information Technology practices and therequisite Internet skills which the Secretarial Teachers lack, will reposition Secretarial Studies programme to meetthe challenges of an IT driven classroom.