The Needs Assessment of Electronic Media for Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century: A Case Study of Colleges of Education in Ghana

Abstract

The objectives of this research were to: 1) find out suitable types of electronic media used for teaching and learning in the colleges of education in Ghana, 2) develop a suitable electronic media prototype to be used in the colleges of education in Ghana, and 3) find out the quality of the electronic media developed for teaching and learning in the colleges of education in Ghana. The key informants used for this research were 17 tutors and administrators form ten colleges of education in Ghana selected through purposive sampling. The Delphi technique through questionnaires was deployed to obtain the data for this research. The data collection was conducted three rounds. The first round solicited experts’ opinions on the needs for using electronic media in the 21st century, the second round was the recommendations made by the experts on the media created, and the final round of the data collection was on the quality assessment of the e-book for teaching and learning. The research results showed that there were needs for the use of electronic media for teaching and learning in the 21st century. Moreover, the data revealed that learners preferred electronic content that can be accessed through mobile phones to any other electronic devices. The findings also indicated that e-book was one of the best electronic media that could be used for teaching and learning in the colleges of education in Ghana (X̅=1.41, SD=0.62). The e-book was chosen as the best electronic media because it allowed the blending of text, video and pictures in one lesson at the same time. With this, in-service training should be organized for the tutors in the colleges of education in Ghana to equip them with how to create online media for teaching and learning in the colleges. Education ministries and NGOs across the globe should sponsor the use of online electronic media for teaching and experiential learning in Africa because it is capital intensive.