E-Learning Readiness and Perceptions of Trainers towards Teaching Skills-Based Courses among TVET Institutions in North Imenti Constituency, Meru County, Kenya
Abstract
With the emergence of COVID-19 coupled with the advent of the digital era, face-to-face learning has been challenged in addressing the learning and teaching needs of both trainees and trainers. Online learning has been adopted to address this unique challenge, however, teaching skills-based courses online has not been explored. Therefore, the current study investigated eLearning readiness and perceptions of TVET trainers to teach skills-based courses in North Imenti Constituency, Meru County. The study adopted a cross-sectional descriptive design to conduct the investigation among 177 TVET trainers who were selected using proportionate sampling from two TVET institutions and a simple random sampling was done within each institution. A semi-structured consolidated, Likert-scale, digital questionnaire was sent by online platforms, that is, email and WhatsApp to solicit data on elearning readiness and perceptions and the competency of teaching skills-based courses online. Data was downloaded from google drive, exported to SPSS, coded, cleaned and transformed. The five-Likert scale was compressed into dichotomous variables. Descriptive statistics such as means, standard deviations, percentages and inferential statistics, that is, logistic regression was performed to get associations. Most of the respondents were young (65%), employed by PSC (61.0%), and were not ready to teach online (75.1%), however, a few of them (33.9%) were enthusiastic. The enthusiastic respondents were 2.6 times (OR= 2.573, p = 0.006) more likely to be competent in teaching skills-based courses online as compared with those whose perception was neutral. One in three trainers had a positive perception and one in two trainers was competent in teaching skills-based courses online, however, three in four trainers were not ready for the same. The Ministry of Education should develop training and sensitization packages for TVET trainers on ICT integration in education, e-learning and effective change management.
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