Effect of Proper Placement During Internship on Office Technology and Management Education Students’ Acquisition of Model Office Technologies Skills in Federal College of Education (Tech.), Omoku, Rivers State

Abstract:

This study examines the effect of proper placement during internship on office technology and management education (OTME) students’ acquisition of model office technologies skills in Federal College of Education (Tech.), Omoku, Rivers State. Two specific purposes, two research questions and two hypotheses guided the study. A quasi-experimental research design was adopted for the study using a post-test, randomised group. The study population was made up of 41 OTME NCE I students during the 2018/2019 academic session. All the OTME NCE I students were used for the study and randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The experimental group was properly placed in business centres where model office technologies can be found while the control group was allowed to select their internship place. A checklist titled “Model Office Technologies Utilization Skills Observational Checklist (MOTUSOC)’ was used for data collection. The list was validated by two experts, one of measurement and evaluation and the other of OTME. Test-retest method and Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) to obtain the r-value of 0.90 for the instrument’s reliability. Data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics of mean, grand mean and independent t-test to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings show a clear difference in the extent of model office technologies skills acquired by OTME students properly placed in business centres from those allowed to choose their place of attachment for their internship. There is also no difference in the extent of model office technologies skills acquired by male and female OTME students properly placed in business centres. The finding also show that there is a significant difference in the extent of model office technologies skills acquired by OTME students properly placed in business centres and those allowed to choose their place of attachment for their internship. There is also no significant difference in the extent of model office technologies skills acquired by male and female OTME students properly placed. Recommendation made among others is that OTME department should canvass for the need to appoint departmental based internship programme coordinators who would work with College based internship coordinator to achieve the proper placement of students in workplaces where they can acquire important office technologies utilization skills.