Information and Communication Technologies Usage among Agricultural Students of Tertiary Institutions in Southwest of Nigeria

Abstract

Abstract Developed Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in learning process have increased the interest of academics, non-academics and students of higher institutions in Nigeria. Technology has inevitably been a powerful tool in every aspect of human life as it allows people easy access to gather, analyse, and transfer data for sustainable development. Several authors have studied the use of ICTs among categories of users in Nigeria and other climes. However, it is important to probe the specific reasons agricultural students of higher institutions users employ ICTs. Hence, the study investigated purposes of Information and Communication Technologies usage among agricultural students of tertiary institution in Southwest of Nigeria. Multistage sampling procedure was used to select 300 agricultural students from tertiary institutions. Structured questionnaire was employed to elicit information on students’ socioeconomic characteristics, availability of ICTs, accessibility and purposes of ICTs usage. Data were subjected to descriptive statistics, chi-square, Pearson Product Moment Correlation and Analysis of variance at p=0.05. Findings reveal that majority (78.7%) of the respondents were less than 30 years, and undergraduate students (82.0%) with mean monthly stipend of 20,108.5 Naira. The most available ICTs among students were internet and mobile phone (95.0%) respectively while they had access to mobile phone (WS=173.0) and radio (WS=155.3), they used ICTs for information (WS=229.9), academics (WS=211.0) and entertainment (WS=206.5) purposes; with high level of  availability (71.0%), access (56.7%) and ICTs usage purpose (51.3%) respectively. There were significant relationships between respondents’ monthly stipend (r=0.200), state of institution (χ2=8.000), religion (χ2=222.660), marital status (χ2=211.680), category of students programme (χ2= 320.4608), type of institution (χ2=56.000) and their purposes for using ICTs but with a significant difference across the states (F=23.821; p=0.00). Students used ICTs for information, academic and entertainment purposes based on their age and type of their institutions. Since ICTs are used for beneficial purposes, it is recommended that ICTs should be adapted, applied and incorporated into tertiary institutions’ curricula across the nation. Keywords:   ICTs usage, Undergraduate students, Entertainment purposes, Mobile phone, Tertiary institutions.