ICT Literacy Amongst University and College Teachers of North East India: A Survey of Refresher Course Participants on Humanities

The present study was undertaken with a view to know the extent of ICT Literacy amongst the participants of Refresher Course on Humanities conducted by Assam University Silchar and other teachers of Assam University, Silchar from various departments who have not participated in the course. The participants are mainly drawn from the colleges and universities of North Eastern Region of India where the penetration of ICT is very slow and teachers are not very much comfortable using computers. For that purpose, survey method has been adopted by the investigator, which comprises of administration of questionnaire, observation of the participants, and interview of some of the participants for knowing the opinion of the respondents in respect of awareness of ICT for their day-to-day activities for their academic and research activities. The self designed questionnaire comprising of 23 questions has been distributed amongst the randomly selected samples. The samples comprises of faculty members of colleges and universities of N E Region who have participated in this course. The filled up questionnaires have been collected from the respondents for the data analysis and interpretations. On the basis of filled up questionnaire the data has been analysed and tabulated using SPSS Software. For data analysis percentage technique, has been adopted. The present work was carried out during March 2007. Therefore the present investigation is delimited to the participates of the Refresher Course only (organized by the Department of Education, Assam University, Silchar) other teachers from various departments of Assam University, Silchar who have not participated in the course. The questionnaire was distributed to 60 participants, out of which 45 respondents have responded. The same study may be carried out on the larger section of population to get the more generalized and authentic findings. The findings of the present study may be taken as the preliminary findings from a pilot study. The paper highlights the important survey findings in respect of ICT Awareness and ICT Infrastructure, Training etc. Besides this, some suggestions and recommendations have also been enumerated in brief.