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USE OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES AMONG ACADEMICS IN NIGERIAN UNIVERSITIES

ABSTRACT

The study was carried out to determine the information and communication technology use for scholarly communication among academics in Nigerian universities, with specific reference to knowledge generation and communication. It also looked at the difficulties faced by academics in generating and communicating knowledge. The study was guided by eight research questions and three hypotheses. Descriptive survey method was used for the study. The population of the study was made up of 3572 academics in arts, education, engineering, science and social science disciplines in ten federal universities having functional information and communication technology in their libraries in the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria. A non-proportionate random sampling technique was used to select six universities, while stratified random sampling technique was used to select respondents. Questionnaire (ICTUSCA) used for data collection was made up of seven sections. The validity and reliability of the instrument were established. The reliability of 0.87 was established for the instrument using Cronbach Alpha procedure. Means and Standard deviation were used to analyze the data while t-test and one-way analysis of variance were used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background to the Study

Knowledge is a very important resource in any institution or organization, whether it is an academic, research, business and industrial organization. Over the years, academics in institutions of higher learning have generated and communicated knowledge as information to other academics. As noted by Ochu and Egbule (2005) knowledge generation has been of great concern to educational administrators, educationists and scholars in Nigeria for some time now. African countries including Nigeria have been trying to promote effective ways of generating knowledge that would transform their society. The actualization of this noble idea rests on the tertiary institutions‟ capacity to develop ideas and effectively generate and communicate knowledge. According to Bellinger, Castro and Mills (2004) knowledge is appropriate collection of information such that its intent is to be useful. Ochu and Egbule (2005) considered knowledge as the information, understanding and skills that an individual gains through education and experience. However, Ali (2005) viewed knowledge as verifiable and useful information obtained through research, opinions, evidence or facts. Knowledge can be seen as opinion, facts, beliefs or information that we possess through research or review of existing literature and transfer from one party to another.

Knowledge is generally categorized into explicit and formal or tacit and informal (Nonaka, 1995, Davenport, 1998, Brooking, 1999). Tacit knowledge is personal or subjective knowledge which exists in the mind of the individual, available to no-one else, elicited from him by questions, or got through his private diaries, letters and notes. Explicit knowledge on the other hand is knowledge or ideas which can be made available to other people for inspection (Brooking, 1999). This means that it can be verbally explained or preferably codified or written down in specific documents. With codification of knowledge it became possible for general knowledge to be simplified and transferred from one party to another. Academics through research and review of existing information generate new knowledge which is discussed, evaluated, and sent to publishers to produce as books or journals. The books produced through this process are purchased by academics themselves or by libraries which process, organize, store and transmit the information from one scholar to another, while journals are subscribed to by libraries and individual scholars.

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