SKILLS REQUIRED FOR COMPUTER MAINTENANCE BY LECTURERS

ABSTRACT

The study was carried out to determine the skills required by computer science Lecturers in colleges of education in Benue state for computer maintenance. Three research questions and three null hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. The population for the study was 78 persons. This consisted of 26 computer science Lecturers of universities domiciled in Benue state, and 52 computer science Lecturers in colleges of education in Benue state. The entire population was used for the study because the number was small and manageable. Structured questionnaire was the instrument employed for data collection. The questionnaire consisted of 63 items developed from the reviewed literature and used to elicit responses from computer science Lecturers of universities domiciled and Colleges of Education in Benue state regarding the research questions. Copies of the questionnaire were distributed by the researcher with the help of three research assistants. 87% of questionnaires were returned and correctly filled. Data collected was analyzed using mean, while t-test for independent samples was used to test the three null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. After carrying out necessary analysis, it was found that computer science Lecturers in colleges of education in Benue state highly require preventive, predictive and corrective skills for computer maintenance. No significant differences were found between the opinions of computer science Lecturers of universities, and the computer science Lecturers in colleges of education in Benue state. It was recommended, among others, that National Universities Commission. should include the teaching of computer maintenance skills to under- graduate computer science students as a compulsory course. Suggestions for further study were also made.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background of Study

Computer is one of the most important single tools for driving educational development. The computer is defined as a data processing machine that accepts input data, processes it and outputs a result (Forouzan and Mosharraf, 2008). Bakpo (2014) described the computer as an electronic machine operating under the control of instructions stored in its memory and able to capture or accept data, manipulate the data according to specified rules, produce results and store the results for future use. The computer may therefore be defined as a multipurpose electronic device which is capable of accepting data, storing, processing it, and giving out the processed results under the control of stored instructions. These functions are possible because of harmonious working among the computer’s component parts.

Computer has two major component parts: hardware (the visible, tangible components) and software (the programs or processing instructions). Computer hardware is further divided into several parts: input devices, central processing unit (CPU), and output devices. Input devices are used to send data into the computer for further processing or storage. These input devices include the keyboard, mouse, joystick, touch pen, touch pad, magnetic ink character recognition (MICR), voice recognition, forensic tools, e.t.c. The mouse, touch pen, touch pad and joystick are generally referred to as pointing devices. Along with the keyboard, the pointing devices form the most common input devices employed for sending data into the central processing unit (Bakpo, 2014).