Digital Competencies Needed by Teachers for Utilizing Mobile Learning Applications for Effective Lesson Delivery in Technical Colleges in Aba Education Zone of Abia State

Abstract

This study was set to determine the digital competencies needed by teachers for utilizing mobile learning applications for effective lesson delivery in Technical Colleges in Aba Education Zone of Abia State. Two research questions guided the study in line with two hypotheses. The study adopted descriptive survey research design and was carried out in Aba, Abia State. The population for the study constitutes 43 Technical College Teachers (sampled purposively) and 55 IT Practitioners (obtained through preliminary survey). Data pertinent to the study were collected using a structured questionnaire developed by the researchers titled “Digital Competencies Needed for Utilizing Mobile Learning Applications Questionnaire (DCNUMLAQ)”. The questionnaire was validated by three research experts and the reliability of the instrument was established using Cronbach Alpha which gave a reliability co-efficient result of 0.77. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while the null hypotheses were tested using t- test at .05 level of significance and appropriate degree of freedom. Some of the findings include that the ability to; provide students with task management tools to organize their work, exploit computer games for pedagogical purposes, create screen capture tutorials, being able to detect plagiarized works in students assignments are part of the digital skills needed by teachers for utilizing mobile learning applications for effective lesson delivery in technical colleges in Aba Education Zone. Based on the findings of the study, the recommendations made among others include that technical college teachers should be retrained for capacity development and adoption of trending technological skills into classroom teaching for enhanced learning outcome, and education administrators/policy makers should enact policies especially for on-time assessment of teachers’ capacity in the use of ICT for teaching in technical colleges for effective lesson delivery.