The effect of new Information & Communication Technology on performance of learners

Abstract

Information and Communication Technology (I.C.T) is a new subject in education. It is a service subject as well as academic discipline by itself, which should enable the delivery of education content to learners in a better way than before. I’he problem studied was to clearly realise the impact of studying I.C.T in teacher training colleges. Most of the learners may not have realised that their study could be either positively or negatively supported by using I.C.T skills. Most of the learning materials are presented in print or in soft copies in every subject hence making the entire study influenced by I.C.T knowledge. The study shows the performance of learners in the teachers training colleges has been significantly influenced by the introduction of the new Information and Communication Technology in their studies. The area of study was a teachers training college being one of the newly affected institutions in training teachers with I.C.T knowledge before going to teach. Learners of the second year of study are considered in the study. I.C.T is being used to make teachers become proficient users of technology as it gives the components that are vital in the technological world. It has been used as a motivating factor to higher levels of learning as the research reveals. To make a learner feel more wanting to study is better achieved by exposing the learners to the technology studies. The skills always availed in the I.C.T studies are for the future and always keeps one discovering more and more to make even the teacher a learner. The null hypothesis is that there is no significant difference in performance of learners with the newly introduced Information and Communication Technology subject in the PI v teacher training colleges with and without the inclusion of other subjects, while the alternative hypothesis is that there is a significant difference in performance of learners with the newly introduced Information and Communication Technology subject in the PI teacher training colleges w ith and without the inclusion of other subjects. The data was collected from the second year students in Moi teachers training college. A sample of 63 learners was taken randomly from the entire population of 362 learners. The analysis is done from the research findings where statistical calculations have been used involving the analysis of variance, the student t-test and the Pearson product moment correlation. In the analysis of variance, the researcher found a score of 49.29 which is significant from the f-distribution score of 3.92. The student’s t-test gave a significance of 0.02 while the Pearson product moment correlation, the significance is 0.005441904 in full. T his gives significance to the three analyses used. The researcher recommends that I.C.T be taught to all levels of education to enable learners to have a similar level of entry qualification's in teacher training colleges. Since the study of I.C.T is influencing the performance of other studies positively, it is a good idea to accept it as subject by it self and service subject to use.