IMPLEMENTATION OF OFFICE TECHNOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT CURRICULUM TOWARDS ACQUISITION OF KEYBOARDING SKILLS

Abstract

The research investigated the implementation of Office Technology and Management curriculum toward acquisition of keyboarding skills in Polytechnics in North-east Nigeria. The study determined two specific purposes and two hypotheses were tested and it was anchored on the 21st century skills theory. The explanatory mixed method research design was employed for the study. The population was 115 comprising 107 lecturers and 8 Heads of Office Technology and Management Departments from eight polytechnics in the North-east. It was a census study since the whole population was used. A 36-item questionnaire tagged ‘’Implementation of Office Technology and Management Curriculum towards Acquisition of Keyboarding Skills’’ (IOTMCAKS) with modified 4-points rating scale was the instrument used for the quantitative data collection. A semi structured interview was used to collect the qualitative data. The instruments were face and content validated by three experts. The internal consistence of the instrument was determined using Cronbach Alpha procedure and the result yielded a reliability coefficient index of 0.82. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions, independent t-test was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The study revealed among others that facilities are available to a high extent with a weighted average mean and standard deviation scores of 3.02 and 0.81, lecturer’s workload is not excessive with a grand calculated weighted average mean and standard deviation scores of 2.90 and 0.84. The findings on all the two hypotheses tested revealed that there were significant differences in the mean ratings of federal and state institutions regarding facilities, lecturer’s workload, for the acquisition of keyboarding skills (t105 = 13.093, P<0.05, 12.769, P<0.05, 6.180, P<0.05, t105 = 12.606, P<0.05. Sequel to the findings of the study it was recommended among others that to ensure students effectiveness managements and heads of departments should not allocate excessive courses to lecturers teaching keyboarding so that they will give proper attention to the implementation of the skilled course.