Digital divide in the utilization of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in counsellor education in Nigerian Universities

Abstract

This study investigated digital divide in the utilization of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in counsellor education in Nigerian universities. It had two research questions and two hypotheses tested at .05 level of significance. It adopted a survey design and used ICT Utilization Questionnaire (IUQ) in gathering data from the entire population of 142 counsellor-educators and trainee-counsellors in the five universities in the South-South geopolitical zone of Nigeria who offered Guidance and Counselling as a course of study at the Master's degree level in the 2007/2008 session. This instrument was validated by five experts, and its reliability was established to be 0.9. A direct delivery technique was adopted for data collection. Data was analyzed using mean, standard deviation and t-test. Findings show that there is no digital divide based on gender but there is digital divide based on status of the population as counsellor educator or trainee-counsellors. Recommendations were made to different stakeholders on bridging this gap.