Computerized Office Skills Required by Computer Educations Students of Colleges of Education For Employment in Business Organizations in Enugu State

Abstract

One of the major concerns of employers of labour in this information age is the recruitment of employees with requisite computerized office skills to fit into the various organization job vacancies and positions. In Computer education, the acquisition of these computerized office skills does not only depends on whether one is able to fulfil the paper requirements of specific jobs. It also connotes how one practically stands relative to others within a group of job seekers. In other words, the acquisition of computerized office skills describes the possession of the requisite office job performance competencies by Computer Education graduates. Thus, the purpose of the study was to find out the computerized office skills required by Computer Education students of Colleges of Education for employment in business organizations in Enugu State. A survey research design was adopted for the study. A total of 480 respondents were studied with no sampling technique. A structured questionnaire was used for data gathering. The reliability coefficient of the instrument was 0.85 using Cronbach Alpha Coefficient method while three lecturers carried out face validation on the instrument. Six research questions and six null hypotheses tested at a 0.05 level of significance guided the study. The mean statistic was employed to answer the research questions while ANOVA was used to test the hypotheses. It was found out that students from Colleges of Education in Enugu State require computerized office skills to be employed in contemporary business offices after graduation. Findings show that the computerized office skills required by Computer Education students of Colleges of Education for employment are word processing skills, database management skills, internet utilization skills, computer graphics skills, communication technological skills, and basic computer maintenance skills. The recommendations made among others are the National Commission of Colleges of Education should as a matter of urgency lay emphasis on skill acquisition and development of computing and information technology on Computer Education curriculum of Colleges of Education, facilities and equipments provided in the various Colleges of Education should embrace the present state of information technology such that the transition from school to work place by the graduates will be easy and the federal government, institutional administration, nongovernmental organizations, enterprises, etc should be involved in the provision of the equipments and facilities to give more opportunity to students for computerized office skills acquisition..