The Digital Divide Between Students and Lecturers: A Case Study of the Access and Attitudes Towards Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Selected Nigerian Universities

The study of inequality in access to and use of ICT among and within countries has over the years attracted significant attention of researchers, policy makers and the world community at large. This is for the fact that ICT has become the most important vehicle that has made the emergence of the global/information society possible and individuals or group that lack access to or unable to effectively use ICT are shut out from meaningful participation in the global society. However, little attention seems given to the emergence of inequality in the use of ICT between students and teachers especially in a developing country like Nigeria and the implications for the teaching-learning process and for the authority of the teacher as a professional that ought to lead knowledge in the school environment. The study was intended to make contribution towards empirically verifying the existence of a digital divide between students and lecturers in three Nigerian universities and to ascertain whether or not attitudes played a role in creating the divide. The findings of the study showed that both students and lecturers had access to ICT but the students were predisposed to its use than the lecturers. The study in examining the attitudes using Student's t-test statistic discovered that both students and lecturers perceived ICT as being very important and with the lecturers' perception even being superior to that of students. However, students demonstrated more interest in the use of ICT and this could be explained by the fact that the factors that encouraged the use of ICT were more favourable to the students. The factors included availability of free time; the need for social networking through use of ICT; the various ordinary level and university entry examinations undertaken by students over the years which have become mandatorily online, etc.