APPRAISAL OF UTILIZATION OF CLOUD COMPUTING FOR SCIENCE EDUCATION INSTRUCTIONS AMONG UNIVERSITIES IN RIVERS STATE

Abstract

Cloud Computing is an emerging technology in education which can change the traditional method of instruction and provides opportunities for delivering a variety of computing services to enhance learning. This paper therefore examines the appraisal of cloud computing in respect to science education instructions in Rivers State Universities. The study is motivated to find out the alternative sources of learning acquisition. The study employed descriptive survey design, two research questions were posed to guide the study and two null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The population of the study consists of 530 final year science Education students in Rivers State University and Ignatius Ajuru University of Education for the 2022/2023 academic session. A simple random sampling technique was used to sample out 260 respondents for the study. The instrument used for data collection was a self-structure questionnaire designed on a 4-point rating scale. Cronbach Alpha reliability co-efficient method was used for reliability test which yielded reliability co-efficient of 0.89, Data was analyzed using mean and standard deviation for the two research questions and z-test was used to test the hypotheses. Findings from this study revealed that students from Rivers State Universities were of the opinion that the use of cloud computing support science education student’s independent knowledge construction and this enhance their ability to learn, and with cloud computing, students can learn at anytime and anywhere, making a shift from teacher centered instruction to student competency-based learning.  It was recommended among others that Education authority should Adopting some cloud computing services provided on Cloud Computing for students’ use, by encouraging, motivating and supporting their learning through different devices anywhere and anytime to aid learning.