AWARENESS AND UTILIZATION OF WEB 2.0 TECHNOLOGIES IN TEACHING BUSINESS EDUCATION COURSES IN UNIVERSITIES IN NORTH CENTRAL NIGERIA

Abstract

The teaching of business education courses even in the 21st century is largely done using the traditional method and this has made the students lose interest even in learning in the first place.  It is as a result of this setback that this study investigated the Awareness and utilization of Web 2.0 technologies in teaching business education courses in universities in North Central Nigeria. The study has two specific purposes, which are to determine lecturers’ level of awareness, extent of utilizing Web 2.0 technologies in teaching business education courses. The study has two research questions and two hypotheses. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design. The population of the study comprises 88 business education lecturers in Kwara, Kogi, and Nasarawa State. The total population was used, it was not too large to manage hence there was no sampling. The instrument used for data collection was a structured questionnaire tagged, Awareness and Utilization of Web 2.0 Technologies in Teaching (AUWTT) with a modified 4-point rating scale.  The instrument was validated by three experts and with a Cronbach Alpha reliability coefficient of 0.86. Mean and standard deviation were used to analyze the data collected to answer the research questions. While independent samples t-test was used to test hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The study found that there was significant difference between the mean response scores of male and female respondents on the level of lecturers’ awareness of Web 2.0 technologies  (t₇₇ = 9.12, P<0.05) and utilization(t₇₇ = 8.37, P<0.05), Based on the findings, it was concluded that awareness and utilization of Web 2.0 technologies are highly utilized. It was recommended among others that the Universities should promote the continued use of Web 2.0 technologies by lecturers in teaching business education by developing a policy that facilitates the integration of these technologies into the educational process.