Assessment of school information system utilization and factors that affect use in Kenyan secondary schools
Abstract
This paper describes a study on the utilization of School Information Systems (SIS) in secondary
schools in Kenya. It begins by describing the structure of the Education system in Kenya, ICT in
educational management and administration and similar studies done in Uganda, Botswana,
Japan, United Arab Emirates and in Hong Kong.
The growing importance of SIS and other technological innovations has become a major catalyst
for change in secondary schools operations and processes in Kenya. SIS are expensive
investments with significant amount of organizational changes, and that is why the issue of
evaluation and assessment of SIS use is important.
The purpose of this study was to establish and document factors that influence the use of SIS in
Kenya secondary schools. Additionally the study looked at types of SIS used in Kenya, the
extent of use, the effects of use and the user's opinion on the quality of SIS used in Kenya. The
study used the Visscher Model developed by Dr. Adrien Visscher.
The study was a cross sectional descriptive survey using quantitative approach to data
collection, analysis and reporting. Two questionnaires were designed and developed to collect
data from several personnel in 28 secondary schools spread across the following provinces of
Kenya i.e. Nairobi,Western,Nyanza and Central.
The data collected was studied and analyzed using the SPSS software tool and the findings
confirmed that there are various factors that influence both direct and indirect use of SIS. These
factors were found to be training on the use of SIS, support from SIS administrators and Length
of use of SIS. Correlation analysis was done on various aspects of quality of the SIS i.e. speed of
retrieving information on screen and speed of printing out information and it was revealed that
they did not affect the use of SIS, therefore the study came up with a new validated Visscher
model for the Kenyan context.
The results of the study also revealed that the SIS was mainly used for clerical purposes while
managerial use by school managers is very limited. It was also revealed that there are several
obstacles that hinder the use of SIS, and these were documented as lack of training, poor quality
SIS and lack of support from both SIS administrators and school administrators. The amount of
training was found to be the most important factor that encouraged the use of the SIS. Thus it is
crucial that during the design and implementation of SIS, we consider increasing the amount of
training for the intended SIS users and hiring the services of a system administrator. The training
offered can be both from external sources or internal sources.
The other factor that proved crucial in affecting the use of SIS was ease of getting help either
from within the school or outside the school. The study also revealed that support from system
administrators is a key factor that determines the use of SIS in Kenya's Secondary schools
The other factor was the quality and quantity of training was also very crucial in affecting the
utilization of SIS. The study concluded that users were generally positive on the effects of SIS
and that better use would be promoted if training was provided to the user at the implementation
stage
Citation
Master of Science in Information SystemsSponsorhip
University of NairobiPublisher
University of Nairobi School of Computing and Informatics