Assessment of Search Skills for Retrieval of Online Information Resources Among Business Educators in Colleges of Education in Adamawa and Taraba States, Nigeria

Alice Adamu Abalis This study adopted a descriptive survey design to capture the opinions of 100 Business Education lecturers (Accounting, Marketing and Management) in Colleges of Education across Adamawa and Taraba States, Nigeria. The entire population was used as the sample; hence no further sampling technique was applied. Data were collected through a structured questionnaire designed by the researcher tagged “Online Information Resources Questionnaire (OIRQ)” validated by three experts and pilot-tested on 15 similar lecturers in Federal College of Education in Gombe State, yielding a Cronbach-alpha reliability coefficient of 0.72. The instrument was administered by the researcher with the help of three trained assistants across four tertiary institutions in the two states. Descriptive statistics (means and standard deviations) were employed to answer all the research questions. Decision rule for research question 1 was based on true limits of numbers, whereas research question 2 was such that items with a mean 3.00 were interpreted as “Agreed” while those below 3.00 were deemed “Disagreed” Null hypotheses were tested with one-way ANOVA and PPMC at the 0.05 significance level, retaining hypotheses where p 0.05 and rejecting them when p < 0.05. The study revealed that business educators in Colleges of Education in Adamawa and Taraba States possess only moderate competencies in the use of search skills for retrieving online information resources. While they demonstrate reasonable ability in carrying out basic searches through general search engines and open educational resources, their proficiency in advanced information retrieval techniques such as Boolean logic, use of scholarly databases, and application of citation management tools remains inadequate. Finally, it was recommended that Colleges of Education in Adamawa and Taraba States should organize regular capacity-building workshops and seminars to improve the digital literacy and search skills of business educators and lecturers should be trained on the use of advanced search techniques such as Boolean operators, keyword refinement, and database navigation to enhance their ability to retrieve quality information resources.