Study on use of information and communication technologies(ICTS) in teaching and learning process at technical colleges

Technical education system produces technical manpower of different competency profiles. The pass outs mainly work in industrial, business and training institutions. Some students become entrepreneurs by setting up their own enterprise. The courses offered by the technical colleges need to be market driven. The teaching and learning process is the core function of the technical colleges. In the modern world that changes rapidly with the evolution of new technologies, the ways of training should be modernized with the emerging trends of ICT. So this study aims to ascertain the u s e of ICT for the teaching and learning process at technical colleges. The objectives of this study are: • To study the present level of using ICT for teaching and learning process at technical colleges. • Identify the activities of the teaching learning and process that ICT can be used and the ways in which ICT can be incorporated into these activities. • To identify the advantages of using ICT over the existing methods used for the teaching and learning process. • To identify the difficulties in using ICT for teaching and learning process at technical colleges and to propose suitable solutions to overcome these difficulties. The study was carried out mainly through questionnaire survey and interviews to achieve the above objectives. It provided the opportunity to identify the present status of using ICT for the teaching and learning process. It also helped to identify the future trends in technical education through ICT. The major two problems identified are the lack of resources and the lack of competence of academic staff members in using ICT for the teaching and learning process. The two suggestions forwarded are to initiate instructional resource centers and to introduce pedagogical license on ICT usage to encourage the academic staff on using ICT for teaching and learning. xvi The major future trends ICT usages are on interactive technical education programs on Internet and World Wide Web. The need for using new technologies in technical education with the potential of ICT such as web based learning and e-learning are identified as the ways of providing the technical education to a larger target group than present traditional methods. Finally this study provided the opportunity to come up with recommendations which will be useful for enhancing the teaching and learning process by integrating ICT. This study aimed at only one function of technical colleges; its leaching and learning process. Therefore further studies should be carried out on the ways of using ICT for other functions at technical colleges such as administrative, quality assurance, career guidance and student counseling, social marketing, curriculum development, student evaluation etc. It will be much helpful to provide market driven technical education for the youngsters of our nation to meet the challenges in the twenty first century