STRATEGIES FOR IMPROVING COLLABORATION BETWEEN TECHNICAL COLLEGES AND INDUSTRIES FOR SKILLS ACQUISITION IN ELECTRICAL INSTALLATION AND MAINTENANCE WORK IN NIGER STATE

Abstract

The study was carried out to determined ways that could be used for improving collaboration between technical colleges and industries for skills acquisition in electrical installation and maintenance work in Niger State. Survey research design was used for the study. The population for the study was 30 industrial supervisors and 20 technical teachers from selected industries and technical colleges in Niger State. A structured questionnaire was used as instrument for data collection. Three research questions and three null hypotheses were formulated. The responses was used to determine the reliability coefficient of the instrument which yielded 0.796. Mean and standard deviation was used to analyzed the data for answering the research questions while t-test statistics was used to test the hypotheses of no significant different at 0.05 level of significance. It was found that 10 items agreed on the administrative strategies that could improve collaboration between technical colleges and industries for skills acquisition in electrical installation and maintenance work in Niger state, 11 agreed on technical college-based activities that could improve collaboration for skills acquisition in electrical installation and maintenance work in Niger state and industries and 8 on industry-based skills that could improve collaboration between technical colleges and industries for skills acquisition in electrical installation and maintenance work in Niger state. There was no significant difference between the mean responses of industrial supervisors and technical teachers on ways for improving collaboration between technical colleges and industries for skills acquisition in electrical installation and maintenance work. There was no significance difference between the mean responses of industrial supervisors and Technical Teachers on the administrative strategies that could improve school-industry collaboration for skills acquisition in electrical installation and maintenance in technical colleges in Niger state. There was no significant difference between the mean responses of industrial supervisors and technical teachers on the school-based activities that could improve school-industry collaboration for skills acquisition in electrical installation and maintenance work in technical colleges in Niger state. Also there was no significant difference between the mean responses of industrial supervisors and technical teachers on those industry-based activities that would improve school-industry collaboration in electrical installation and maintenance in technical colleges in Niger state. It was recommended that industry based job skills should be included in the curriculum of technical colleges for skills acquisition. Technical teachers instructors should visit industrial enterprises to familiarize themselves with the current technologies, sharing of facilities between technical colleges should be encouraged. Curriculum and syllabus of technical colleges be discussed with many employers as possible on the formation of curriculum objective, selection of curriculum content, organization of the content, selection of learning experience and the organization. Training equipment, machines, laboratories, workshop and ICT library, classroom should be provided to technical colleges by government and philanthropies in the society for effective training.