Effect of Technology Supported Instructional Platforms on Undergraduate Students’ Attitude towards Educational Technology in Public Universities in Nigeria

Abstract

Attitude is one of the major factors in the teaching and learning process. Social media teaching cannot replace the conventional teaching methodology in education but rather it supports, complements and enhances its effectiveness. Despite the technological advancements in the teaching sector and the educational benefits of social media, developing countries like Nigeria are yet to fully adopt the use of social media in an educational setting. Several studies have been carried out on attitude of students towards the use of information and communication technology for learning purpose but there seems to be inadequate studies on the impact of technology supported instructional platforms. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the effect of technology supported instructional platforms on undergraduate students’ attitude in Educational Technology. The study adopted a quasi-experimental research design. The target population was selected from second year educational technology students. Simple random sampling technique was used to select three out of the five public universities offering educational technology in Nigeria. From the selected universities, experimental and control groups of respondents were purposively selected. In the experimental group, there were 180 respondents while in the control group, there were 120 respondents who were purposively selected to participate in the study owing to characteristics of interest. Data gathered were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. The results revealed that a significant difference exists in the mean attitude response score of the experimental group one and control group (P<0.05 level of significance (P=.033). There was also a significant difference between experimental group two and control group in their attitude response towards educational technology after teaching them with technology supported instructional platforms and lecture method (P<0.05 level of significance (P=.024). Therefore, the study recommends that technology supported instructional platforms should be incorporated into the major teaching strategies for Educational Technology courses in public universities in Nigeria.