The Effectiveness of Ethiopian Higher Learning Institutions Website Content for Knowledge Creation and Sharing Among Students and Academic Staffs

Abstract

The study focused on the effectiveness of Ethiopian higher learning institutions’ website contents for knowledge creation and sharing among students and academic staffs. The unavailability of adequate researches on the area also contributed its share for this problem. The main objective of this research is to analyze contents of higher learning institutions website for knowledge creation and sharing by students and academic staffs. To conduct this research across sectional survey which included quantitative and qualitative approaches was used. In order to gather the data that answer the research questions, latent analysis, questionnaire and interview were used. Three first generation Ethiopian Universities (Addis Ababa, Hawassa and Jimma) were chosen as study sites. The total sample size was determined using Kothari formula, then 237students and 9 directors were selected using simple random and purposive sampling techniques respectively. The data were statistically analyzed in SPSS by using descriptive and inferential statistics as well latent analysis was interpreted and discussed. The findings of this study revealed that higher learning institutions website 100 % provide collections on their websites. However, the performance/usefulness of the collections available on the websites is under average. 89.9% of contents available on the HLIs websites are not accurate enough to create and share new knowledge. 72.1% the quality of contents in terms of getting knowledge has been rated poor and there is no usage of local languages, interactivity between the users and the directors of repository and contents uploaded without any criteria. Therefore, the research concluded that the effectiveness of the web contents for creating and sharing knowledge were less effective to enable users to create and share new knowledge with others because the contents were not uploaded based on the users’ interest and not based on curriculum. Depending on the findings of this study it is recommended that Higher learning institutions need to identify who will be responsible for content measurement and they should follow the web content strategy framework that used to measure usefulness, accuracy, relevance and completeness of web contents in terms of creating and sharing knowledge.