Abstract
The survey research design was adopted in this study which examined ICT competence and challenges to ICT usage among academic staff. Six research questions were posed to guide the study and a questionnaire was developed, validated and used for data collection from a sample size of 300 academic staff. The collected data were analysed using descriptive statistics (percentages). The results show that majority of the academic staff funded their ICT training; high number of them have laptops; access to internet was mainly at public cyber cafe; majority (53.3%) rated their ICT competence as low. Inadequate ICT facilities, excess work load and funding were identified as major challenges to ICT usage among academic staff. Recommendations made include funding of ICT training of academic staff by the university management and making ICT training mandatory for all academic staff.
Highlights
A look at Table 1 show that 268 (89.3%) of academic staff funded any form of information and communication technology (ICT) development training they have undertaken
This finding implies that institutional commitment to staff development in ICT is very minimal as only 10.7% of the respondents have had institutional assistance in funding their ICT development. This finding brings to bear the position of Carlson and Gadio (2002) that while teacher professional development is woefully underfunded generally, the situation of training in technology is much worse, as policy makers operating within budget constraints tend to give priority to hardware and software acquisition. Their observation holds true for the two institutions used in this study as both have little or no effort towards funding of training of academic staff in ICT
From the findings of this study, it was concluded that ICT skills development undertaken by academic staff was mainly self-funded
Summary
Ogbiji Faculty of Education, Cross River University of Technology, Calabar, Nigeria training in the use of ICT is the best starting point in the ICT policy of a country because they are the key to making learning happen. This according to them is so because teachers who succeed in making use of ICT in their work process, do contribute to improved learning outcomes in their students, but may benefit personally from enhanced work productivity, reduced isolation and increased professional satisfaction. Production of multimedia course materials, data analysis, e-library, video conferencing, networking and e-payments are other areas of competencies that teachers need to develop
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