EVALUATING THE IMPACT OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY ON TEACHING AND LEARNING IN HEALTH TRAINING INSTITUTIONS OF GHANA

Health training institutions in Ghana have had sufficient retooling by the government and other stakeholders regarding information and communication technologies (ICTs) that have impacted greatly in the health training institutions and teaching and learning as a whole. The importance of these technologies cannot be overemphasized as a student or a teacher with the quest to advance in terms of ICTs in their day-to-day academic work. This paper sought to evaluate the impact of Information and Communication Technologies on teaching and learning, a case study of Tamale School of Hygiene. The exploratory research design was adopted for this study. The Mixed Methods research approach was employed to gather and analyze data. The study population was both students (210) and tutors (12) constituting 222 population size. Since the population sized was not all that large, all the 222 students and teachers were used as the sampled research participants/respondents from whom data were collected. Data collection instrument used was questionnaire administration and face-to-face deep interviews. Data was analysed using Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) version 16. The study results revealed that no enabling ICT facilities were available for effective and efficient teaching and learning at the Tamale School of Hygiene due to the lack of state-of-the-arts ICT infrastructure at the school. The major findings are that, the infrastructure and the ICT technologies were not available and that tools teachers and students can use were few and were not being incorporated into teaching and learning, amidst poor internet connectivity, limited internet bandwidth, low internet speed, financial constraints and unplanned/unpredictable power interruptions and complete power outages in school, coupled with. The study concludes that, workshops and training seminars should be organized for the entire tertiary teachers and students in the application of these ICTs and Ghana Education Service (GES) should make available the required logistics to complement the training of teachers and students.

Results and findings:
The following are the summary of the results in evaluating the impact of ICT in teaching and learning at Tamale School of Hygiene. The research focused on the availability of the tools, the technologies teachers and students are able to use and how they are robbing them into teaching and learning and the changes thereafter. The pedagogy the researcher adapted was the constructivism theory of teaching where the student is the centre of teaching. The findings show that respondents understood that information and communication technologies go beyond just computers and majority of the respondents robed in these technologies in their academic activities amidst challenges such as power interruptions, unstable internet connectivity and policy document supporting the incorporation.

The study findings show that majority of the respondents thus 86 representing 38.7% agreed that information and communication technologies go beyond computers signifying that they have a fair understanding of what ICTs are. 28.8% (64) of the respondents also agreed strongly that information and communication technologies go beyond computers that go to confirm the definition (UNESCO, 2002) gave to ICTs as “forms of technology that are used to transmit, process, store, create, display, share or exchange information by electronic means”.