EFFECT OF ONLINE INSTRUCTION ON KEYBOARDING SPEED AND ACCURACY ACHIEVEMENT AMONG OFFICE TECHNOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT STUDENT

Background to the Study

One of the most significant occurrences of the 20th century is the invention of the Internet and World Wide Web in the 1980s. This has remained so through the 1990s when Information and Communication Technology (ICT) took centre stage. These inventions have changed and continued to change people‟s lives and activities in almost all aspects of life including education and training, transportation, communication, business, banking and leisure. As Mbah (2016) stated, this modern technology has launched the world into a knowledge-based economy in which ideas and technological principles are used for better output. Thus, advancement in technology according to Muhammed, Asua and Munnaza (2015) has compelled teachers and educators to utilize its benefits for the delivery of instruction and promote learning through on-line learning.

An area that has been most affected by this phenomenon is the office. The space, tools and equipment, procedures/processes and personnel (including office managers/secretaries) involved in the generation, maintenance and management of office information have been revolutionized. These changes in the functions of secretaries, office layouts and equipment used in performing office functions have given rise to specific training and retraining needs for the secretaries. This is to ensure that they remain relevant and contribute adequately to the goals of their

employers and the society. The changes also led to the expansion and extension in the curriculum/syllabus of secretarial studies and change of the nomenclature to office technology and management (OTM) and job title from secretary to office manager. Salleh, Musa and Sulaiman (2017) noted that today‟s secretary has come to assume the rightful position as the chief organizer of the secretariat, its staff and equipment. The nomenclature has changed the job title from „the secretary‟ to „the office manager.‟

The introduction of ICTs into education has resulted in changes in the ways everything is done in teaching and learning. Today, ICTs facilitate teaching and learning through on-line learning, e-learning and similar terms and methods which are rapidly taking over the conventional or face-to-face teaching and learning modes. According to Omoniyi and Boluwaji (2014), this development justified the transformation of secretarial studies into OTM and modernization of the curriculum in order to equip students with relevant office and socio- psychological skills and competencies for the current information era.

Despite the above changes, the core competency area on which secretarial duties are anchored is the generation of information by „note taking‟. Before the invention of the typewriter, note-taking was entirely done manually in shorthand and subsequent handwritten transcription. In Office Technology and Management (OTM), the core skills centre on the use of computer to generate and process information with keyboarding speed and accuracy. According to Career and Technical Education Resource Centre (CTERC, 2012), keyboarding refers to inputting of data using the touch method on a standard alpha-numeric keyboard known as the QWERTY keyboard.

Keyboarding is as old as the history of typewriting itself. Today in the society, keyboarding is evident in almost every aspect of life. One constantly experiences the need of keyboard training in the educational system for its sustainable development. Oyeyiola (2006) and Daudawa (2006) opined that if education is to take a new and dynamic significance, it must be aimed at training the child for some specific skills. The challenge then to business teachers in preparing National Diploma (N.D) students and/or workers for entry into Higher National Diploma and/or work places are to indicate which method of teaching keyboarding is more appropriate for development of work habits and high operative skills.

Career and Technical Education Resource Centre (CTERC, 2012) asserted that the goal of keyboarding instruction is to develop a touch skill that will enable an individual to enter alpha-numeric information at a speed that is faster than writing with hand. The source further observed that once keyboarding skills have been imbibed, students should be able to strike the correct keys without looking at them or the fingers. Whereas a person speaks at an average of 120 words per minute, an expert in keyboarding can reach a speed of 125 words per minute. At graduate of National Diploma (ND) is expected to type a passage of 350 words at 98% rate of accuracy (NBTE, 2014). Perfection in keyboarding depends on sitting position and controls (Schenectady County Public Library, 2010). The

are broken down into seven aspects, namely, (i) correct keyboard height (ii) correct distance from the keyboard (iii) right positioning of the body/person, (iv) wrist position (v) eyes on the copy material (vi) fingers anchored and (vii) relationship of light and the eyes.

Speed and accuracy are important requirements for effective performance, professional growth and upliftment of office technology and management students. However, most OTM students do not seem to acquire high speed and accuracy that will enhance their work performance in employment considering the current mode of teaching keyboarding with manual typewriters. Office Technology and Management curricula are tailored towards the needs of the labour market with conventional method of instruction being used predominantly as against the use of online learning in developed countries of the world (Magaji, 2015). For example, Alsaaty and Cater (2016), reported that as at 2011, over 6.1 million of students in tertiary institutions in the United States of America were taking at least, one online course. According to Allen and Seamans (2013), the number of people engaging in on-line learning grew at about 9 per cent and the trend showed no sign of reversing. Allen and Seamans observed that forces external to the institutions such as finance and demand for schedule flexibility among others are factors driving the change.

Office Technology and Management programme was designed for two major reasons. According to Adelakin (2009), the first was a response to the yearnings of secretarial studies students and practitioners for change of the name

of the programme as it makes their products seem only suitable for the traditional office environment. The second was to integrate ICT, managerial and entrepreneurial competencies in order to enrich the knowledge of students and equip them with skills needed in the modern office environment. Hence, the OTM curriculum of National Diploma in keyboarding at the third semester is to equip students with the ability to type efficiently various office jobs and acquire a copying rate of 35 words a minute on passages not below 1.3 syllabic intensity with 98% accuracy.

Online learning encompasses a face-to-face, mixed and blended delivery model that utilizes electronic means. The electronic devices include e-mail, cell phone, interactive CDs, internet, computers, radio, optical fiber technologies (Ugwoke , 2011). According to Obikeze and Onyechi (2011), online learning means formal and non-formal education that uses electronic delivery method such as internet based learning delivery packages, CD-Rom, online video conferencing or e-mail to manage the relationship between teachers and learners. This study uses the term online instruction to mean teaching keyboarding using computer instructional packages such as Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. The Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing is an application software which can be installed in a computer for teaching and learning keyboarding. The software rates users at the completion of each task on accuracy, typing speed, errors and words per minute. At the end of the exercise, users can also print their result which comes out in a certificate format.

In Nigeria, based on governments‟ dwindling resources and load-shedding, increasing rate of unemployment amidst increasing demand for quality education, it is pertinent that the route to effective educational delivery will increase reliance on online instruction. As Micheal and Heather (2014) insinuated, not only is on- line instruction fast becoming an important mode of teaching and learning, it is becoming more and more acceptable, affordable and therefore preferable. According to Michael and Heather, on-line instruction could have positive influence on students‟ performances and increase their accessto wider area of interaction. Moreover, Emeasoba and Nweke (2016) noted that ICT availability and usage has been slow in Nigerian polytechnics particularly with respect to OTM programmes. With increasing demand for Vocational Technical Education (VTE) (especially OTM) amidst declining instructional facilities, the most practical solution will be online instruction. Apart from declines in government funding, availability of teach your-self, easy-to-follow online teaching aids and packages, personal funding, flexibility and increasing desire will tend to bias education in Nigeria towards on-line learning like other countries.

There is a large body of literature and empirical works on on-line instruction versus conventional instructional methods but only few have addressed the effects of on-line learning and conventional learning on keyboarding speed and accuracy which are the foundation blocks of OTM. The FRN (2014) stipulates that teaching should be shifting towards practical activity, experiment and ICT supported. This indicates that government desires to

 

movetowards on-line instruction in line with global trends. Furthermore, more and more professionalsin other fields who depend on the knowledge, skills and expertise of office managers are themselves becoming highly computer literate and know fairly well about keyboarding. Consequently, the demand for office managers (specialists in the field)will decline unless they continue to maintain an edge in their own profession by out-performing all others in note-taking via keyboarding in order to remain dependable and indispensable.

Gender influence in students‟ academic achievement is a crucial matter to the educationist. Oluwatulure (2015) asserted that gender refers to the social attributes and opportunities associated with being a male or female, woman or man and being a girl or boy. These attributes, opportunities and relationships are socially constructed and are learnt through socialization processes of which the school is one of the major agents. The gender issue is one of the most divisive classifications in human relationships. According to Bloksgaard (2011), there are so many directions to gendering - biological, psychological, anthropological, sociological and even economic. Dania (2014) and Filgona, Sababa and Filgona (2016) argued that gender cannot be factored in students‟ performance but Adeyemi and Ajibade (2011) posited that gender could play a significant role in students‟ achievement. It is not clear if these performance indices would not change if new instructional methods like online teaching are adopted in teaching a skill course such as keyboarding, hence, this study will test gender.

A cursory look at professions and gender seems to show that there are three professions that are gender biased in favour of women – nursing, secretarial duties and teaching to a lesser extent. It can be suggested that the tendency of introducing gender dimension in secretarial profession researches is because the secretarial profession is still considered, rightly or wrongly as women‟s work. It will, therefore, be necessary to ascertain the extent to which this natural calling contribute to differences (if any) in the keyboarding speed and accuracy achievement of male and female OTM students.