IDENTIFICATION OF NEW TECHNOLOGY SKILLS REQUIRED BY TEACHERS OF OFFICE TECHNOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT FOR TEACHING IN POLYTECHNICS IN NORTH CENTRAL NIGERIA

Abstract

The study examined the new technology skills required by teachers of office technology and management for teaching in Polytechnics in North central Nigeria. One research question guided the study and the hypothesis of no significant difference was tested using the independent t-test at 0.05 level of significance. Descriptive survey design was adopted. The population of the study consisted of 85 teachers of office technology and management (OTM) drawn from Polytechnics in North central Nigeria. The entire population was adopted as the sample in view of the small size. The main instrument for data collection was a four point rating scale questionnaire. The data collected were analysed using mean and standard deviation. The mean was used to answer the research questions while the standard deviation was used to determine the closeness or otherwise of the responses from the mean. The findings revealed that OTM teachers highly required new technology skills in the use search engines, hypertext markup language, browsers on the World Wide Web, interactive multimedia packages, web 2.0 tools, Wi-Fi, short messaging services, and multimedia messaging service. The findings further revealed that there was no significant difference between the mean response of experienced and less experienced teachers of OTM on the new technology skills required for teaching in Polytechnics (t₈₀ = 0.215, P>0.05). It was concluded that new technology skill are critical for the production of competent OTM graduates who will fit perfectly in to the modern work trend. Based on the findings and conclusion of the study, it was recommended among others that authorities of Polytechnics must make it a point of duty to ensure regular retraining of OTM teachers on the use of new technologies for teaching.

Key words: New Technology; Skill; Office Technology and Management