Abstract:

Teaching practice is regarded as a backbone to any teacher training student’s academic career as it enables him/her to practise what he/she learnt at the university. In order to apply what the student teacher learnt, he or she should be guided by his/her mentor(s), peers and lecturers from his/her university. To provide suitable direction, proper, affordable, instant and reliable communication channels should be enabled. Social media tools such as WhatsApp and Skype have been argued as pivotal in augmenting good communication which is vital to student deployment, teaching and learning. Therefore, this study explored the perceptions on WhatsApp/ Skype usage by 3rd year Information technology teacher training students in promoting student teacher deployment and mentoring. A multistage sampling technique was used to select a size of 39 2rd year Information technology teacher training students, male (n=19), and average age of 23. A web based questionnaire (through Blackboard) was used to gauge students’ perceptions on WhatsApp/Skype usage in teaching practice.

The questionnaire was structured in the following headings of teaching practice experiences:
(i) the student’s ability to express him/herself to their peers/mentors (lecturer from the university or promoters at designated schools),
(ii) deployment at schools,
(iii) availability of either the mentor/student), and
(iv) level of the classes being taught. Permission to undertake the study on the consented students was provided by the faculty teaching officer.

Ethical issue(s) were also considered during the study. Collected data were analysed by Matlab software. Research findings were presented by the use of descriptive statistics. Results of the study that were classified under teaching practice support, resource based findings suggested a positive correlation of WhatsApp/Skype usage, job placement and mentoring.

Keywords:

ICT enhanced placement, effective education environment, ICT enriched teaching, ICT enriched teaching learning.