Assessing Teachers’ Perception on Integrating ICT in Teaching-Learning Process: The Case of Adwa College

Abstract

Rapid growth and improvement in ICT have led to the diffusion of technology in education. The purpose of this study is to investigate teachers’ perception on integrating ICT in teaching-learning process. The research questions sought to measure teachers’ software usage as well as other instructional tools and materials, preferences for professional development on information gathering and support, factors that encourage teachers’ usage of technology, teachers’ perceptions of self-efficacy and barriers that teachers faced during technology utilization in teaching-learning process. A population of 72 teachers at Adwa College participated in this survey. The result on hardware and software usage shows that majority of teachers in the college are unable to use hardware in teaching learning process due to mainly shortage of resources. Teachers who cannot use ICT as instructional tool are 55.6 percent higher than those who can use it.  This indicates that most teachers in the college are not integrating ICT in the course they teach. In regard the information and support services, there is no equal support service by the technical support units.  Adwa College is found as poor by most of the teachers in preparing ICT trainings. The mean of the factors that encourage technology ranged from 2.72 to 2.99 which indicate that encouraging technology is important to apply ICT in teaching-learning process. Moreover, the mean for the perception of teachers about ICT usage ranged from 4.28 to 4.79 shows that Adwa College teachers have strong positive perception to use ICT in teaching-learning process. Pearson correlation (r=0.412) shows that there is significant relationship between teachers’ perception towards ICT integration into Teaching-learning process and the factors that encourage ICT usage. This indicates that the teachers’ perception towards ICT integration into teaching-learning process increases if ICT usage is encouraged and vice versa. The results of the correlation for the  relationship between teachers’ perception toward ICT usage to increase quality of courses they teach and their productiveness due to ICT usage is also found as significant (r=0.615). This indicates that the teachers’ productiveness is realized if ICT is integrated to the course they teach. However, majority of the teachers pointed out that one of the barriers to technology implementation is lack of teachers’ technical knowledge and shortage of resources. This shows that equipping the college with ICT is not enough for attaining educational change. Therefore, the college should critically focus to integrate ICT in each course to make courses interactive and easily understandable by their students.

Key words: Adwa, Barriers, Diffusion of technology, Hardware and Software, ICT, Integration, Perceptions.