Integrating ICT into Teaching-learning Practices: Promise, Challenges and Future Directions of Higher Educational Institutes

Abstract

Education is a very socially oriented activity and quality education has traditionally been associated with strong teachers having high degrees of personal contact with students and technologies. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have become commonplace entities in all aspects of life. The use of ICT has fundamentally changed the practices and procedures of nearly all forms of endeavour within business and governance. Within education, ICT has begun to have a presence but the impact has not been as extensive as in other fields. The use of ICT in education lends itself to more student-centred learning settings and often this creates some tensions for some instructors and students. But with the world moving rapidly into digital media and information, the integration of ICT into teaching-learning practices is becoming more and more important and this importance will continue to grow and develop in the 21st century. This study aimed at exploring the process of integrating ICT into teaching-learning practices and its emerging challenges in Adama Science and Technology University. In this study, a mixed design (quantitative & qualitative) in line of descriptive survey method was used. The sample population consisted of 203 respondents (188 instructors, 10 school deans and their vices and 5 department heads) from the five schools. Instruments were observation, individual interviews and questionnaires. The study argues the role of ICT in transforming teaching and learning and seeks to explore how this will impact on the way programs will be offered and delivered in the universities of the future. The analysis of data revealed that integrating ICT into teaching-learning is yet to be accomplished. The data revealed that the participants, both the instructors and students, have positive attitudes towards ICT and considerable knowledge and positive understanding of ICT and its potential in teaching and learning. However, the university fails to provide appropriate ICT-training courses for instructors to develop their technical ICT skills. Having said this, there are crucial examples of horizontal integration; that is, the instructors provide opportunities for the students to use ICT in meaningful contexts. The finding suggest that there is a relationship between the practitioners‘ stages of concern and stages of adoption, which can be described as follows: the personal level of concern moves from the self-concerns‘ to task and impact-concerns‘, the personal adoption level is also likely to move from entry to invention. Although the finding reveal some crucial factors that has prevented the instructors and students from using ICT in teaching and learning, among these the institutional ones such as lack of proper access to ICT resources, overcrowded-classrooms, lack of technical and pedagogical support are more influential on the integration process. The researcher then recommended that, the ministry of education and Sample University should pass a bill at the national assembly on the use of effective ICT facilities in the educational system by provision of adequate fund, securing of ICT experts in university and ensuring that these facilities are monitored from time to time.