Availability and Utilization of Emerging Technologies and Effective Management of Basic Education in Ogoja Education Zone of Cross River State, Nigeria

This study examined the availability and utilization of emerging technologies for effective management of basic education in Ogoja Education Zone, Cross River State. Two research questions and two hypotheses were developed to direct the study. Descriptive survey research design was adopted in this study. The population of the study was all the public schools in the study area. Stratified random sampling technique was used to select the sample. The sample was 300 teachers and 36 administrators. The instrument used was the questionnaire titled “Availability and Utilization of Emerging Technologies for Effective Management of Upper Basic Education” (AUETEMUBE). The instrument was validated by two experts in the Measurement and Evaluation Department. A 4-point Likert type questionnaire of Strongly Agree (SA-4), Agree (A-3), Disagree (D-2), Strongly Disagree (1) was used to collect data for the study. The questionnaire contained twenty (20) items. The data collected was analyzed using the mean and standard deviation for the research questions while the Pearson Product Moment Correlation Analysis was used to analyze the hypotheses at 0.5 level of significance. The items with mean score 2.50 and above were accepted while items with criterion mean of less than 2.50 were rejected. The findings revealed that availability and utilization of emerging technologies are rare in most schools in the study area. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that government should collaborate and partner with technology companies and non-governmental organizations to provide schools with necessary resources and support for integration of technology into education; government should collaborate with some agencies to organize workshops and online courses to train teachers on the use of digital tools and resources.

Keywords: Availability, Utilization, Emerging technologies, Management, Basic Education.