Personal Characteristics, Computer Literacy Competence And Use Of Academic Social Networks By Lecturers In Private Universties In Osun State, Nigeria
Tajudeen
Dr. J.S. Opakunle Library, Osun State Polytechnic, Iree, Nigeria
Modupeolu Anne Osalusi
Information and Documentation Department, Forestry Research Institute of Nigeria, Ibadan
Mercy Akoun
Information and Documentation Department, Forestry Research Institute of Nigeria, Ibadan
David Ogbe Agbenu
Forestry Research Institute of Nigeria, Jericho, Ibadan
Keywords: Personal characteristics, Computer literacy competence, Academic social networks, Lecturers, Private universities.
Abstract
Academic Social-Networking Sites (ASNS) such as Academia.edu and ResearchGate are becoming very popular among academics. These platforms allow lecturers to upload their academic articles, abstracts, and links to published full-text articles and also track the reading and citation of their published articles among others. Despite this, some studies have reported low use of the academic social networking sites by lecturers. This gap could be a function of their personal characteristics and computer literacy competence. Thus, this paper examined Personal Characteristics (PCs), Computer Literacy Competence (CLC) and use of Academic Social Networks (ASNs) by lecturers in private universities in Osun State, Nigeria. The descriptive survey research design of the correlational type was adopted and the population consisted of 935 lecturers in eight private universities in Osun State, Nigeria. The single-stage random sampling technique was used to arrive at the sample size of 507 and data was collected with the questionnaire and analysed with frequencies, mean, standard deviation, Pearson's Product Moment Correlation and multiple regression. Results showed that Computer literacy competence and demographic factors like age, gender and academic qualifications are significant determinants of use of academic social networks by lecturers. Thus,management of the universities should ensure that ratings from some of the academic social networks like Google Scholar and ResearchGate contribute certain percentage to the promotion of lecturers especially the h-index and i10-index.