Skills Required by Agricultural Education Students of Colleges of Education for Employment in Compterized Office of Agribusiness Organizations

Abstract

One of the major concerns of employers of labour in this information age is the recruitment of employees with requisite computerized office skills to fit into the various organization’s jobs and positions. In Agricultural education, acquisition of these computerized office skills do not only depends on whether one is able to fulfill the paper requirements of specific jobs but also how one practically stands relative to others within a group of job seekers. In other words, acquisition of computerized office skills describes the possession of the requisite office job performance competencies by Agricultural Education graduates. Thus, the purpose of the study was to find out the computerized office skills required by Agricultural Education students of Colleges of Education for employment in agribusiness organizations in Enugu State. A survey research design was adopted for the study. A total of 176 respondents were studied with no sampling. A structured questionnaire was used for data gathering. The reliability coefficient of the instrument was 0.85 using Cronbach Alpha method while three lecturers carried out face validation of the instrument. Three research questions and three null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Mean statistic was employed to answer the research questions while t-test was used to test the null hypotheses. It was found that Agricultural education students from Colleges of Education in Enugu State require computerized office skills to be employed in contemporary agribusiness offices after graduation. Findings showed that the computerized office skills required by Agricultural Education students of Colleges of Education for employment are word processing skills, database management skills and internet utilization skills. It was recommended among others that the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE) should as a matter of urgency lay emphasis on skills acquisition and introduction of computing and information technology in Agricultural Education curriculum of Colleges of Education.

Keywords: Skills, Agricultural Education Students, computerized office, Agribusiness, Employment