STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION, ATTITUDE AND PREFERENCE FOR THE EXAMINATION MODES AT FEDERAL UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY MINNA, NIGER STATE

Abstract

This study examined students’ perception, attitude and preference for the examination modes at Federal University of Technology, Minna, Niger State. A descriptive survey design was adopted for this study. The sample size of 194 undergraduate students from 200 and 300 level (150 male and 44 female) in the department of educational technology were randomly and purposively drawn from the target population of 1,791 science and technology education (SSTE), out of the total population of 21,509 undergraduate students in FUT, Minna. The instrument used for data collection was a researchers’ designed questionnaire. The instrument was structured into four sections; section A, B, C and D. Section A was used to collect demographic data while sections B, C, and D contained 10 items each which were used in data collection on students’ perception, attitude and preference of examination respectively. The instrument was validated by two educational technology experts and one guidance counsellor from FUT, Minna. Using Crobach Alpha formular, a reliability co-efficients of 0.76, 0.77 and 0.75 were obtained for the variables perception, attitude and preference respectively. Six research questions were asked and three hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 alpha level of significance. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while data obtained for the three hypotheses were analyzed using independent t-test. The findings of the study indicated that students had a positive perception and attitude towards e-examination and a negative perception towards paper-pen examination and students preferred e-examination to pen-on-paper examination based on some performance influencing factors. Gender had an influence on the perception, attitude and preference of students towards the modes of examination. There was a significant difference between male and female students perception towards the modes of examination with t=2.90, p= 0.04 (p<0.05). There was a significant difference between male and female students attitude towards the modes of examination with t=1.97, p= 0.05 (p=0.05). There was no significant difference between male and female students preference for the examination modes with t=1.13, p= 0.26 (p>0.05). Based on the findings, the following recommendations were suggested: Undergraduate students in SSTE, FUT, Minna should be encouraged to have positive perception and attitude towards e-examinations and full adoption of eexamination in the university as it could improve their performance. Undergraduate students in SSTE, FUT, Minna should be encouraged to have positive preference of eexaminations and full adoption of e-examination in the university as it could improve their performance.