BUSINESS EDUCATORS PERCEPTION OF THE USE OF E-LEARNING APPLICATIONS FOR MITIGATING THE IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON THE BUSINESS EDUCATION PROGRAMME IN ANAMBRA STATE

Abstract

The study determined business educators’ opinion on the use of e-learning for mitigating the impact of Covide-19 on tertiary business education programme in Anambra State. One research question guided the study and two hypotheses were tested. The population of the study comprised 109 business educators in tertiary institutions in Anambra State. The instrument was a 15 items structured questionnaire developed by the researcher. The instrument was validated by three experts in the Department of Business Education, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University, Igbariam Campus. The instrument was subject to a pilot test on 10 business educators in Enugu State. The application of the Cronbach Alpha reliability test on the returned data yielded coefficient value of 0.79 for internal consistency. The mean value was used to answer the research questions while the standard deviation was used to ascertain the homogeneity or otherwise of the respondents’ ratings. For the hypotheses, t-test was used to test all the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Findings revealed that business educators in tertiary institution in Anambra State opine that e-learning will mitigate the impact of covid-19 on the business education to a high extent. The respondents further opined that e-learning promotes flexibility in teaching and learning of business education courses, ensures that learning objectives are achieved regardless of actual online contact time spent in teaching- learning, focuses on achievement of students needs, creates room for independent learning, promotes ease of monitoring and documentation of teaching activities and gives lecturers the ability to adapt to the wide learning styles to a high extent.  The gender and years of working experience of the respondents did not significantly affect their opinion. It was recommended based on the findings of the study that Government should be more committed in providing Information and Communication Technology application and tools for business education programme in tertiary institutions. The researchers also recommended that administrators of business education programme in tertiary institutions should partner with Private IT firms should be welcomed to provide ICT Support services for e-learning and e-education platforms for the business education programme.

Keywords: E-learning, Covid-19, Business Education Programme, business educators