Students of UEW urged to be abreast with ICT skills

The University of Education,Winneba (UEW) is gradually mounting most of its academic programmes on-line and consequently require that lecturers put their lesson plans and assignments on-line for students to access. The situation therefore demands that teacher-trainees of the University become proficient in Information,Communication Technology (ICT) and be prolific computer users. The Dean of the Faculty of Science Education, Mawuadem Koku Amedeker, said this when he presented a paper he co-authored with Dr. Issifu Yidana of the department of ICT Education in Winneba. The title of the paper was: "Are our teacher-trainees prepared to meet the exigencies of the changes in the policies of course registration, checking of examination results and assessment submissions?" Its findings examined the strengths and weaknesses of undergraduate science teacher-trainees of UEW in ICT skills. Mr. Amedeker said as from the inception of the second semester of the 2009/2010 academic year, students are required to self-register their academic programmes on-line and also check their semester examinations on-line. He said majority of the science teacher-trainees sampled have limited knowledge of word processing, use E-mails and computer programmes, power point slides creation and presentation. The lecturer said weaknesses reported during the research imply that UEW science teacher-trainees may not be fully prepared for changes in academic regulations that involve ICT integration into the curriculum. The findings recommended that UEW should embark on a more comprehensive ICT programme to enable teacher-trainees to acquire skills in ICT.