Correlations Among Availability of Information and Communication Technology, ICT Skills, Perceived Ease-of-use and Use Electronic Resources by Law Lecturers in Nigerian Public Universities

Abstract

Law lecturers occupy a vintage position in producing legal experts who will later constitute the bar and benches in the society. However, as global as the profession is, there seems to be existence of some challenges in electronic resources use by law lecturers in public universities in Nigeria. Previous studies on the issue largely focused on strategies for improving the use of ER with little consideration for the extent to which availability of Information and Communication Technology, ICT skills, and perceived ease-of- use could influence the use of ER. Therefore, the study investigated the influence of the availability of ICT, ICT skills (applications, text creation, access and manipulation, database, and the Internet Communication skills) and perceived-ease-of-use on the use of ER by law lecturers in public universities in Nigeria. Survey research design was adopted. Four hundred and twenty (420) law lecturers, 247(58.8%) male and 173(41.2%) female participated in the study. There were significant positive relationships among availability of ICT and use of electronic resources by law lecturers (r =0.21), and ICT skills and use of electronic resources (r=0.22) while perceived ease-of-use of ICT did not. Availability of ICT, ICT skills and perceived ease-of-use, jointly influenced the use of electronic resources (F _(2,416) =4.90, R²=0.26). The relative contributions of the independent variables to the use of electronic resources were: availability of ICT (β=.14, t=2.01); ICT skills (β =.14, t=1.87) and perceived ease-of-use of ICT (β =0.20, t=.27). Availability of Information and Communication Technology, Information and Communication Technology skills and ease-of-use of Information and Communication Technology influenced the use of electronic resources by law lecturers in public universities in Nigeria. ICT and other basic infrastructure in appreciable quantity should be provided by the government and the management of the universities for use of the law lecturers and, Publicity of the acquired electronic resources and their contents.

Keywords: Information and communication technology, ICT skills, Electronic resources, Perceived ease-of-use of ICT, Law lecturers in public universities, Nigeria.