ICT Utilization by the Faculty Members in State Agricultural Universities (SAU's): Gap Analysis (original) (raw)

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in agricultural education has paramount importance to bring reality to the teaching learning process. In spite of committed efforts, the utilization of ICT tools in agricultural education is still not reaching to the expectations of the stakeholders. Ample numbers of ICT tools were also been regularly designed and refined to suit to the teaching learning process in agricultural education. But the focus on the valid gaps for underutilization of ICTs has not been made by the researchers in agricultural education system. To explore such gaps and to bring a modest approach to the faculty members to learn and efficiently utilize the ICT in their teaching endeavor, the present study was taken up under ICAR extramural research project during the year 2016-17 with the objective of identifying and analyzing the gaps in ICT utilization by the faculty members in State Agricultural UniversitiesThe study revealed that there was thirty two per cent gap existed between Awareness and Frequency of Use of ICTs among the faculty members and was found as major gap followed by 28 per cent gap was found between Awareness and Application proficiency, 25.00 per cent gap between Awareness and Knowledge and 19.00 per cent gap between Accessibility and Frequency of Use of ICT by the faculty members. The Chi square test revealed that the personal factors viz., age, gender, academic qualification, designation, experience didn't have any impact on ICT utilization by the faculty members. The process factors like Awareness, accessibility, knowledge, application proficiency and attitude had strong impact on extent of ICT utilization by the faculty members. The 'R 2 ' value of 0.893 depicted that all the selected ten factors put together explained about 89.60 per cent variation in the utilization of ICT by the faculty members. Further, the process factors viz., knowledge and application proficiency significantly contributed to most of the variation in the utilization of ICT by the faculty members. The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is a very broad term focusing on improving the quality, quantity and speed of information to reach the students in an educational system. ICT has become, within a very short time, one of the basic building blocks of modern society. Many countries now regard understanding ICT and mastering the basic skills and concepts of ICT as part of the core of education, alongside reading, writing and numeracy. With ICT, teachers are able to create their own material and thus have more control over the material used in the classroom than they have had in the past. ICT offers an excellent opportunity for improved coordination across the agricultural nexus, bridging the information gap, sharing information and creation of knowledge. Tinio (2002), states the potentials of ICTs in increasing access and improving relevance and quality of education in developing countries.