Undergraduate Students' Attitudes towards Communication Research and ICT Integration in Lagos, Nigeria

Abstract

 This study investigated undergraduates' attitudes towards communication research and ICT integration in Lagos. Descriptive research design was adopted while cross-sectional survey method was used, with a sample of 438 respondents purposively selected from Lagos State University and University of Lagos. The instrument used for the study, Attitude of Students Questionnaire (ASQ), which was made up of 31 items rated on seven point Likert scale with a content validity proportion of agreeing to essential value of 0.874 from a total of 8 panel who rated the items on three anchors: essential, important but not essential, and not necessary. Anchored on diffusion of innovations theory, the outcome of the study shows that attitude is a major predictor of students' performance in research related courses. Students with positive attitudes performed better than students with negative attitudes. Negative attitudes of students stem from their lack of attendance, poor self-esteem, lack of interest and non-practicality of the research course as most of the classroom teaching were considered abstract. It found that majority of students partially perceived communication research in negative terms but they positively perceived ICT integration into communication research and demonstrated strong willingness to learn the subject using ICTs. This shows that ICT integration is a major determinant of students' willingness to learn communication research. Also, the findings revealed that there existed no significant difference between male and female students' attitudes towards communication research and students' attitudes towards communication research did not vary with their academic levels. Therefore, we recommend that communication schools or departments should integrate student-friendly ICTs into the teaching and learning of communication research. Contents on such ICTs should be specially designed to ease learning among the students.