Z, Zayapragassarazan. (2017). Information Seeking Behaviour of College Teachers in Puducherry with Special Reference to Skills of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Techno-pedagogy. Unpublished. Ph.D., Education Technology. Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli..

1.      To develop and validate a comprehensive tool to study the skills of Information Seeking Behaviour, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Techno-pedagogy.

2.      To ascertain the levels of Information Seeking Behaviour, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Skills and Techno-pedagogical Skills among the college teachers.

3.      To find out the significant difference  among the college teachers in their Information Seeking Behaviour in the sub-samples of  Gender, Age, Qualification, Discipline, Designation, Working Sector, Computer ownership, Possessing e-mail ID, Hours spent in computer, Computer usage for Education, Computer usage  for Browsing and Computer usage  for Entertainment.

4.      To find out the significant difference among the college teachers in their  Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Skills in the sub-samples of  Gender, Age, Qualification, Discipline, Designation, Working Sector, Computer ownership, Possessing e-mail ID, Hours spent in computer, Computer usage for Education, Computer usage  for Browsing and Computer usage  for Entertainment.

5.      To find out the significant difference among the college teachers in their  Techno-pedagogical skills in the sub-samples of  Gender, Age, Qualification, Discipline, Designation, Working Sector, Computer ownership, Possessing e-mail ID, Hours spent in computer, Computer usage for Education, Computer usage  for Browsing and Computer usage  for Entertainment.

6.      To find out the significant difference between the observed and expected results in Information Seeking Behaviour of college teachers for the use of information resources.

7.      To find out the significant difference between the observed and expected results in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) skills of college teachers in the ability to handle, manipulate and manoeuvre the tools of ICT.

 

8.      To find out the significant difference between the observed and expected results in Techno-pedagogical skills for the use and integration in teaching-learning processes.

 

9.      (a) To find out the significant relationship between Information Seeking Behaviour and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Skills among the college teachers. 

     (b)  To find out the significant relationship between Information Seeking Behaviour   

            and Techno-pedagogical Skills among the college teachers. 

 

10.  (a) To find the significant contribution of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Skills, Techno-pedagogical skills and background variables on Information Seeking Behaviour among the college teachers.

(b) To find the significant contribution of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Skills and background variables on Information Seeking Behaviour among the college teachers.

(c)  To find the significant contribution of Techno-pedagogical Skills and background variables on Information Seeking Behaviour among the college teachers.

 

11.  To conduct a SWOT analysis to exert information from college teaches regarding the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats faced by them in their institution with specific reference to ICT and ICT skills.

 

12.  To conduct a PESTLE analysis to exert information from college teachers regarding the political, economical, social, technological, legal and environmental issues that influences the application of ICT in higher education.

 

13.  To conduct an interview among the teachers of higher education to gain in depth understanding of the college teachers with regard to Information Seeking Behaviour, ICT skills and Techno-pedagogical skills.

 

14.  To evolve recommendations on the basis of findings for future policy decisions.

 1.      (a) The Information Seeking Behaviour among the college teachers is not high and their levels are not equally distributed.

(b) The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Skills among the college teachers is not high and their levels are not equally distributed.

(c) The Techno-pedagogical Skills among the college teachers is not high and their levels are not equally distributed.

2.      There is no significant difference  among the college teachers in their Information Seeking Behaviour in the sub-samples of  Gender, Age, Qualification, Discipline, Designation, Working Sector, Computer ownership, Possessing e-mail ID, Hours spent in computer, Computer usage for Education, Computer usage  for Browsing and Computer usage  for Entertainment.

 

3.      There is no significant difference  among the college teachers in their  Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Skills in the sub-samples of  Gender, Age, Qualification, Discipline, Designation, Working Sector, Computer ownership, Possessing e-mail ID, Hours spent in computer, Computer usage for Education, Computer usage  for Browsing and Computer usage  for Entertainment.

4.      There is no significant difference  among the college teachers in their Techno-pedagogical Skills in the sub-samples of  Gender, Age, Qualification, Discipline, Designation, Working Sector, Computer ownership, Possessing e-mail ID, Hours spent in computer, Computer usage for Education, Computer usage  for Browsing and Computer usage  for Entertainment.

5.      There is no significant difference between the observed and expected results of equal probability in the Information Seeking Behaviour for College teachers.

6.      There is no significant difference between the observed and expected results of equal probability in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Skills for College teachers.

7.      There is no significant difference between the observed and expected results of equal probability in the Techno-pedagogical Skills for College teachers.

8.      (a) There is no significant relationship between the Information Seeking Behaviour and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) skills among the college teachers. 

(b) There is no significant relationship between the Information Seeking Behaviour and Techno-pedagogical Skills among the college teachers. 

9.      (a) There is no significant contribution of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Skills, Techno-pedagogical skills and background variables on Information Seeking Behaviour among the college teachers.

(b) There is no significant contribution of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Skills and background variables on Information Seeking Behaviour among the college teachers.

(c) There is no significant contribution of Techno-pedagogical Skills and background variables on Information Seeking Behaviour among the college teachers.

A total of 63 colleges out of 87 colleges (72%) were selected for the present study using stratified random sampling which constitute the sample for the present study.   The main strata are colleges of education (19 out of 30 colleges), colleges of arts and science (14 out of 18), colleges of engineering (9 out of 16), medical colleges (8 out of 10) and other colleges (13 out of 13) which includes nursing colleges (5 out of 13), dental college (1 out of 13), colleges of health sciences (paramedical sciences) (3 out of 13), law college (2 out of 13), college of agriculture (1 out of 13) and college of veterinary (1 out of 13). A simple random sample of 565 higher education teachers from the above 63 selected Colleges were contacted through e-mail, personal meeting and through peer references to participate in the study.

Quantitative tools

1.      Information Seeking Behaviour Scale for College Teachers (ISBSCT) that is developed to assess higher education teachers’ frequency of use and their preference to the format of the information resources listed in the scale that they would normally use in their teaching, learning and evaluation process.

2.      ICT Skills Scale for College Teachers (ICTSSCT) that is developed to ascertain higher education teachers ability to handle, manipulate and manouvere the tools of ICT as listed in the rating scale.

3.      Techno-pedagogical Skills Scale for College Teachers (TPSSCT) that is developed to ascertain higher education teachers’ technological skills which they would use and integrate in their teaching learning process as instructional tools, instructional strategy, material, etc.

4.      Personal Data sheet seeking information on Gender, Age, Qualification, Discipline, Designation, Working Sector, Computer ownership, Possessing e-mail ID, Computer usage  for Education,  Computer usage  for Browsing, Computer usage  for Entertainment and Hours spent in computer.

Qualitative Tools

1.      Questionnaire for SWOT analysis to collect information to understand the strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats with reference to application of ICT in higher education as perceived by the respondents. 

2.      Questionnaire for PESTLE analysis to collect information to understand the political, economical, social, technological, legal and environmental factors that influences the usage of ICT in higher education as perceived by the respondents.

3.      Interview guided approach- A semi structured interview to gain a deeper understanding of higher education teachers’ cultural perceptions—a construct that calls for a greater consideration than quantitative methods could actually afford.

Descriptive method with survey technique was adopted for this study.  Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used in this study in order to collect the required data on Information Seeking Behaviour, skills of ICT and Techno-pedagogy and to gather more in-depth information to ensure the trustworthiness of the results among the teachers of higher education in Puducherry Union Territory.

First, the study utilized cross-sectional survey methods to gather quantitative data on the population. Second the results of the quantitative analysis were supplemented by Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) and Political, Economical, Social, Technological, Legal and Environmental (PESTLE) analysis and third by in-depth personal and telephone interviews. Thus the study utilized methodological pluralism or “the multiple data-collection methods" which contributes to the trustworthiness of the data 

Quantitative data was analyzed through descriptive statistics, differential statistics, regression analysis and correlation analysis. The content analysis of the qualitative data was analyzed manually.

The tools to ascertain the level Information Seeking Behaviour, ICT skills and Techno-pedagogical skills which are developed and validated for the study were found to be comprehensive, easy to administer and suitable in general for all higher education teachers. The questionnaires for SWOT and PESTLE analysis and structured interview guide developed for the study were also found to be suitable to achieve the objectives framed for the study.

The Information Seeking Behaviour and ICT skills of college teachers in Puducherry were found high despite they are not equally distributed among the sub-samples.  But the Techno-pedagogical skills of college teachers are not high and it is not equally distributed. This reveals that the college teachers seek information for their teaching-learning activities on par with the present trend of information seeking by their counterparts elsewhere in the nation or globe.  This finding of the present study has quantum of agreement with the studies reported  by  (Greenhow, 2009; Gopalakrishnan et al., 2008;  Stokes and Lewin, 2004 and Umbur,  2008). The implications of the finding is professional preparation of the college teachers through the Information Seeking Behaviour.

One among the striking results of the present study is that there is a gender difference in Information Seeking Behaviour of college teachers.  In the present study the female teachers (mean=30.33, n= 70) were found to have higher level of information seeking than that of their male counterparts (mean=27.84, n=192).  These findings are in agreement with the findings of Santoshi, Anjali and Chakrabarty, 2010 where they noted significant differences in most of the domains of information seeking behavior with respect to gender. Females scored high on all the domains of information search except in diversity in search where the males were found to be high. The findings may have implications for research and practice in psychology, especially in the subfields of professional development, library science, cognitive development, and training and performance appraisal.

The Information Seeking Behaviour of the colleges teachers do not significantly differ with respect to their designations, qualifications and Working Sectors. The Information Seeking Behaviour of the college teachers differed significantly with respect to age group, discipline, computer ownership, possession of e-mail ID, purpose of computer usage and time spent in computers and internet.  This shows that all these variables influenced the Information Seeking Behaviour of college teachers taken for the study. ICT skills of college teachers do not significantly differ with respect to their gender, working sector, qualification and designation. But the variables computer ownership, possession of e-mail ID, age group, discipline, purpose of computer usage and hours spent in computer and internet significantly influenced the ICT skills of college teachers. These findings are corroborates with the findings of Duke and Ward (2009) and Yurdakul and Kabakci (2011).

Similarly, the Techno-pedagogical skills of college teachers do not significantly differ with respect to their gender, working sector, qualification and designation. But the variables computer ownership, possession of e-mail ID, age group, discipline, purpose of computer usage and hours spent in computer and internet significantly influenced the Techno-pedagogical skills of college teachers. This shows that professional college teachers have more opportunity than other college teachers. These findings are similar to the findings of Barrette and Gazaille (2009).

The high score of mean value of Techno-pedagogical skills among the different disciplines of college teaches of the present study indicates that a considerable number of college teachers are in tune with the ongoing trends in the application of technology in teaching-learning activities.

Textbooks are the prime source of information for all the college teachers. In spite of the proliferation of newer technologies in education textbooks did not lose their attraction among the college teachers. This suggests that text books with modern technological inputs will encourage the college teachers to make use of textbooks effectively. The ICT skills of the college teachers of different disciplines are found to be remarkably higher than their techno-pedagogical skills.  This indicates that even though they are skilled in computer and internet they are not applying in their classroom activities. This might be due to unfavourable organization climate or lack of resources in the work place. There exists a significant difference between the observed and expected results of equal probability in the Information Seeking Behaviour of College teachers with reference to various information sources given in the research tool used for the study. There exists a significant difference between the observed and expected results of equal probability in the ICT skills of College teachers with reference to various ICT skills given in the research tool used for the study. There exists a significant difference between the observed and expected results of equal probability in the Techno-pedagogical skills of College teachers with reference to various Techno-pedagogical skills given in the research tool used for the study. There exists a positive, significant and moderate relationship between the Information Seeking Behaviour and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Skills among the college teachers. There exists a positive, significant and moderate relationship between the Information Seeking Behaviour and Techno-pedagogical Skills among the teachers of higher learning institutions. It is inferred that 23.60% of variance in the Information Seeking Behaviour of the teachers of higher learning institutions has been explained by the Techno-pedagogical Skills, Gender, Computer usage for Entertainment, Computer Ownership and Discipline as the set of five independent variables. It is inferred that 21.00% of variance in the Information Seeking Behaviour of the teachers of higher learning institutions has been explained by the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Skills, Gender, Computer usage for Entertainment, Computer usage for Browsing, Computer usage for Education and Computer Ownership as the set of six independent variables. It is inferred that 23.60% of variance in the Information Seeking Behaviour of the teachers of higher learning institutions has been explained by the Techno-pedagogical Skills, Gender, Computer usage for Entertainment, Computer Ownership and Discipline as the set of five independent variables. The analysis and compilation of SWOT questionnaire revealed the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (challenges) encountered by higher education teacher in their respective institutions in terms of institute policy on ICT, ICT infrastructure, trained manpower, ICT as mandatory subject, emerging trends in ICT and e-learning, ICT as a component of professional development of higher education teachers and connectivity are noted as worth mentioning. These analyses support the findings made by Chowdhury, 2009; Singh, 2011; Zarka and Soldado, 2010 and Sharma and singh 2010. The analysis and compilation of PESTLE questionnaire revealed the how far political, economical, social, technological, legal and environmental factors influence the ICT scenario in India in general and in particular to the respondents work environment. Attitude of political leaders, policy makers, proliferation of digital tools, increasing e-learning environment and e-resources, co-operation of administration and administrators, acceptance of ICT as a teaching-learning tool by teachers and learners, legal and ethical issues involved in the use of ICT tools are the remarkable associated factors noted from the PESTLE analysis. These analyses support the analyses reported by Karsenti, Colling and et Harper-Merrett, 2012; Beaudin and Hadden, 2004 and McElhinney and Nasseh, 1999. The compilation of interview guide obtained from the respondents with respect to their perspectives of ICT in higher education showed that the respondents stressed for conducive work atmosphere for using ICT in teaching-learning activities, necessary policy measures and encouragement from the administrators and government for effective implementation of ICT in higher education. Similar recommendations have been recorded by Beaudin and Hadden, 2004; Wang, 2008 and Zayapragassarazan and Ramganesh, 2010.

1.      The low utilization of certain information resources and the minimum level of the skills of ICT and Techno-pedagogy witnessed in this study stress the need for the sensitization of higher education teachers through sensitization programmes at tertiary education level.

2.      The gender difference in the Information Seeking Behaviour reported in this study lays emphasis on the need for gender specific training and information sources for higher education teachers.

3.      This study witnessed acceptable level of ICT skills and Techno-pedagogical skills among the college teachers, serious considerations are needed for the integration of ICT components while formulating higher education curriculum.

4.      Based on the findings of the study it can be noted that ICT be made a compulsory subject like Environmental Studies in all undergraduate courses as implemented by University Grants Commission (UGC). Training the higher education teachers in ICT be made compulsory at all levels and Academic Staff Colleges can be given directions to implement the same. Further professional credits can be awarded to encourage higher education teachers to use ICT in their routines.

5.      Free laptops and internet connection to college teachers be provided to encourage them to use ICT for teaching and learning.

6.      As per the perceptions reflected by the respondents in the SWOT analysis public-private partnerships could be established to mobilize as many materials and financial resources as possible while the pedagogical decisions remain under the purview of education stakeholders.

7.      Orientation can be provided for higher education teachers to encourage and facilitate the Techno-pedagogical integration of ICT. Further, regular conferences and seminars can be organized to ensure that all education stakeholders assume responsibility for the pedagogical integration of ICT.

8.      Development of national policy for the pedagogical integration of ICT be initiated as it is the need of the hour with strong commitment for implementation of the same to encourage, orient and harmonize local initiatives.

9.      A national policy for teacher training to develop the Techno-pedagogical competencies of College Teachers be mooted by the government.

10.  As evidenced by the opinion of college teachers in the PESTLE and interview guide even though the Internet provides access to a vast quantity of materials on which teachers can draw to improve the quality of their work and refresh the learning process, unfortunately, teachers do not always have time to search for and assess these materials. Techno-pedagogical resource banks can be created which will serve as a compilation of most relevant Techno-pedagogical resources for different disciplines. 

11.  The qualitative analyses lays emphasis for the leadership development in the field of application of ICT in higher education which will develop proper attitude towards ICT among the administrative level personnel of higher education for they are in the implementing end.

Keyword(s): College teachers, higher education, information seeking behaviour, ICT skills, techno-pedagogical skills.