THE EFFECT OF IN-ADEQUATE COMPUTERS IN SECRETARIAL TRAINING IN NIGERIA

THE EFFECT OF IN-ADEQUATE COMPUTERS IN SECRETARIAL TRAINING IN NIGERIA

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

The importance and sensitive position of a secretary in an organization can never be over-emphasized. In fact, the availability of computers has a great positive effect on secretarial training. Lack of it usually affects them vehemently.
They play major roles in both private and government establishments. Most of these secretaries are trained in the tertiary institutions of learning in Nigeria, especially in polytechnics.
The history of the polytechnics in training secretaries has assumed greater roles in recent time.
Considering the special nature of secretarial courses, peculiar equipment such as computers and word processors are normally used in secretarial training. Lack of exposure to these special equipment makes a graduate of secretarial studies uncomfortable and unprepared to face squarely the challenges of the job and office automation as a result of technological advancement. A secretary has to grow with the technology in order not to be displaced from her job.
These modern machines, for examples, computer word processor, accounting machines, dictating machines, duplicating machines, etc are supposed to be taught in detail, in secretarial department of Delta State Polytechnic, Ozoro to enable the secretarial student be fit in the modern offices.
Invariably, these equipment are much desired to give proper orientation to the secretarial students in the acquisition of their manipulation skill that will go along side to help them perform their duties in any office, no matter the type of equipment in use there. Availability of these equipment is one of the criteria normally considered by the National Board of Technical Education (NBTE) for the accreditation of tertiary institution to run courses in secretarial administration and the department can be discredited if it fails to provide these required equipment needed for effective training of secretaries.
Now, the fact is, most of the tertiary institutions today are consequently left with incredible poor financial base to the extent that they found it difficult to meet the cost of providing the required instructional equipment for their students. The undoubtedly result is that students of this department will graduate with little or no knowledge for operational skill of these equipment, thereby presenting poor image and embarrassment to self and institution from where he/she graduated.
In line with this, Nolen (1964) observed that schools lack adequate equipment when he said:
In spite of new or improved office appliance which have appeared in the market in recent years, many schools lack office equipment.

THE EFFECT OF IN-ADEQUATE COMPUTERS IN SECRETARIAL TRAINING IN NIGERIA