EDUCATIONAL E-SERVICES AND STUDENT SATISFACTION IN NIGERIAN PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES

This study sought to investigate educational e-services and student satisfaction in Nigerian universities using the University of Abuja as case study. The study’s objectives were to identify the implementation of educational e-services; impact of e-services on student satisfaction and challenges impeding educational e-services and student satisfaction at the University of Abuja. The study adopted a survey design whereby the researcher elicited relevant information from the distributed questionnaire and extensively reviewed pieces of literature. The data generated from the questionnaire were analyzed using mean, standard deviation and hypotheses tested using linear regression model, chi-square, and spearman rank correlation (Statistical Package for Social Sciences, version 23). The findings revealed that the University of Abuja, had adopted educational e-services in the form of email services, website interaction for and e-registration, fees payments, e-payment platform, virtual/online classes via GoogleMeet and the University management interaction with students using social media platforms such as Telegram and Facebook. The study also revealed that students are not satisfied with the mode of virtual/online lectures, time allocated for virtual classes, internet network, e-library services, and e-registration for hostel accommodation. Factors impeding educational e-services were poor maintenance culture, overpopulation, cost/poor funding, low ICT literacy/digital divide, inadequate ICT experts, poor internet network and poor knowledge of best practices. Therefore, the study recommended that public-private partnerships and internally generated revenue should be expanded to increase the revenue base of the university to provide the needed educational e-services facilities. Also, training and retraining of the University staff on ICT should be adopted. The University management should adopt best practices in the maintenance e-library by content centralization, updated and recent learning materials, full accessibility, user-friendly electronic devices, multi-format and appealing contents so to increase students’ satisfaction. Also strict adherence to National Universities Commission (NUC) policy on students’ admission should be implemented fully. Awareness on the importance on the need to imbibe good maintenance culture of the University properties should be carried out periodically by management. Partnership with telecommunication companies to build more network gadgets/devices to improve network connectivity, periodical assessment by the University leadership, the Ministry of Education and students on implementation of educational e-services should be adopted.