LECTURERS’ CAPACITY FOR ONLINE TEACHING AND IMPLICATION FOR MANAGING EMERGENCY SHUTDOWNSIN NORTH-CENTRAL NIGERIA

Abstract

The educational sector has gone online as a way of forestalling a total collapse of teaching and learning activities 
at all levels of education necessitated by the lockdowns to curtail the spread of the novel coronavirus ravaging the 
world. While this measure has been useful in forestalling a total shutdown of educational activities, it is pertinent to 
ascertain lecturers’ capacity for online teaching and research. This study adopts a descriptive research design of 
survey type. The population for the study were University lecturers while the target population were lecturers in 
North-Central Nigeria. A multi-stage sampling technique was employed, consisting of stratified and cluster 
sampling techniques. Data were collected using the Lecturers’ Skills for Online Teaching Questionnaire “LCOT” 
which was administered using Google forms at both the pilot testing and final administration stages of the study. 
The reliability of the instrument was established using the measures of internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha with 
reliability indices of 0.94 and 0.91 for Sections C and D sub-scales). Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics. 
Findings from this revealed a dart of online teaching and assessment tools for university lecturers who were faced 
with a myriad of challenges with using the existing ones and have a dear need for training for optimal performance 
with online teaching. It was recommended that the government should invest in educational infrastructure for higher 
institutions. Workshops should be organized on designing of teaching materials for online use.