Level of Availability and Utilization of Information and Communication Technology Facilities by Students: A Case Study of Federal Polytechnic Nekede, Owerri, Imo State Nigeria

This paper is an attempt to evaluate the availability and utilization of Information and Communication (ICT) facilities  by students in Federal Polytechnic Library, and also challenges the academic library faces in the area of adoption and utilization of ICT in their service delivery. Questionnaire survey approach was adopted. Primary data were collected with the aid of a four point likert scale questionnaire. Questionnaires were administered to Students of the study area. The Population for the Students at Federal Polytechnic Nekede  is 870 which was obtained from the Universities’ Information and Communication Technology block (ICT, 2017). The sample size is 290. The sampling technique used here is stratified simple random. To guarantee the reliability of the instrument, it was administered on ten(10)participants out of the envisaged population of the study. A test-retest reliability method of two weeks interval was conducted, response obtained were subjected to Pearson Product Moment Correlation method and a reliability co-efficient of 0.78 was obtained. To analyze data on the research questions of the study the researcher used descriptive statistical mean. The hypothesis was tested using the chi-square (x²) which is a statistical tool to test hypothesis about the relationship between means of groups. It was tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study found that scanning machines, printer, CD-ROM, Computer, Flash Drives, Land Area Network (LAN) and Inverter were available but few. Also the majority of the students indicated that they use ICT to retrieve information (3.1), make research(3.1), disseminate information (3.0) chat with friends (3.1) and download files (3.0). Challenges such as unreliable telecommunication network (3.3) insecurity in the library (3.3) epileptic power supply (3.3) unreliable internet (3.0) and high cost of ICT hardware/software were identified as major challenges of availability and utilization of ICT in the school’s academic library. It was recommended however that these challenges be looked into both by the institution and government in order to address the challenges.

Keywords: Academic Library, Education, ICT, Information and Communication Technology, Nigeria, Students, Utilization