This paper is a product of research that sought to evaluate the attitudes portrayed by staff in higher education administration in an effort to adopt ICT for students’ record keeping. With an endeavour to bring an understanding of change management in the context of an institution of higher learning, knowledge of the level of staff readiness for the change is important. Staff attitudes were evaluated in this paper because they are considered an important indicator of change readiness. The change under focus is adoption of a Student Information System (SIS) at an Institution of higher learning, Africa International University (AIU) and the results could relate to other institutions. The study involved university staff members who were in either management of course registration, grades information or both for the academic year 2011/2012. Mixed methods were used involving qualitative data, collected through pre-study interviews and quantitative data in the actual study. Data were collected in three phases, first was by face-to-face semi-structured interviews in a preliminary study with 2 members of the University’s Management Committee, and second was pre-study with 6 representatives of local best practices in records management (USIU and Strathmore University). Descriptive data for the actual study with AIU staff members were collected using a questionnaire which mainly collected quantitative data but also had room for open-ended questions. Evaluative Research design was adopted for the study, where descriptive data from AIU staff were placed in comparison with the pre-set criteria from the best practice institutions. Judgment was then made to determine the level of change readiness among the staff members at AIU based on prevailing attitudes to adopt a SIS in management of students’ academic records. The threshold for readiness was set at 67%. The entire study evaluated 5 indicators of change readiness, and only one, (staff attitudes) which is the focus of this paper met the set threshold to indicate change readiness towards the use of a SIS in records management.
Keywords: Attitudes, Change Management, Information Systems, Records Management, information and communication technology (ICT).
