University Lecturers’ Perceived Challenges to the Use of Digital Technologies for Research in the South-west, Nigeria

Abstract

This paper examined Nigerian university lecturers’ gender and ownership on the perceived challenges encountered on the use of digital mobile technologies for research. The trend of research globally in the 21st century calls for the use of digital mobile technologies irrespective of lecturers’ gender and university ownership. The study was descriptive of cross sectional survey type using structured questionnaire. A total of 742 respondents were drawn from 13 purposively sampled public (federal and state) universities in South-west, Nigeria. The reliability index of the instrument yielded r=0.92 at 0.05 level of significance using Cronbach Alpha. Three research questions and two hypotheses were answered and tested respectively. Frequency counts, mean and percentages were used to answer research questions 1, 2 and 3; while hypotheses 1 and 2 were tested using independent t-test at 0.05 level of significance. The study revealed that irrespective lecturer’ gender and university ownership, challenges were encountered on the use of mobile technologies in facilitating research. The study among others recommends organization of workshops and seminars for university lecturers on effective use of mobile technologies in facilitating research. Also, female lecturers in the State Universities should be encouraged and motivated in using digital mobile technologies for research.