A Model For Measuring Impact Of Digitization In Schools

Abstract

Certainly, digitization has become ubiquitous; now. Almost in all the sectors we routinely interact with digital technologies. In this generation it is elating to be referred as ‗digital‘ and degrading to be referred to as ‗analogue‘. In the context of Kenyan secondary school, digitization like a railway track moves in two major planes namely the use of Management information systems (MIS) for purposes of school management and ICT integration for the delivery of the curriculum. There is great deal more information and research on the use of Information Technology in curriculum delivery in class. But the literature is conspicuously silent on the integration of the two systems that will help effectively create a smart school system, or a digital school. This research undertook to study the extent of impact of the Use of ICT in curriculum delivery and use of MIS in school management. What lacks is the formal way of assessing the impact of the corporate effect of digitization on both the academic performance of the school and service delivery needed creating. This research undertook to create a model to give a quantitative assessment of the impact of digitization in secondary schools. This study was driven by desire to evaluate the impact of digitization in our educational institutions. This will help shed light on whether our educational institutions are in sync with digital progress and whether that is producing a measurable difference in terms of academic performance f the learners and the service delivery of the institutions. The research targeted 35 teachers from seven of the 11 public schools of Makadara Sub- county in Nairobi county. The study sought the teachers input in assessing the adequacy of infrastructure, the reliability and speed of computer systems and the impact that this had on both their students interest and improved academic performance which is referred as slope in this study. The input from teachers solicited through questionnaires was converted into numeric values by use of likert scale from which two measures, the MIS metric index and ICT Integration Index were developed as independent variables. These measures calculated for each of the seven sample schools were compared to the academic performance trend of each of the schools calculated using the MS Excel slope function. The two set of data were found to have a strong positive correlation of 0.49 for MIS Metric Index and 0.63 for ICT integration Index. From the two of these values an empirical model was developed which took the form of multiple regression relation. A manual statistical calculation was used to solve for the constants of the relation thereby arriving at the model. This model can be used to either interpolate or extrapolate the values of school digitization index and its impact of the school. The reliability and validation of the model was evaluated by use of Cronbach Alpha measure of internal consistency and found to have the acceptable value of 0.735.