Abstract—With the increasing acceptance of open and distance learning (ODL) as a major channel of widening access to higher education in Nigeria, it has become increasingly necessary that the procedure for educational evaluation process be established to maintain standard if the ODL provision is to be relevant and recognized as complementary to conventional higher education. With the introduction of e-exams, institutions still grapple with serious issues including the preparedness of the lecturers coping with more technicalities associated with electronic examinations. Unfortunately, there is shortage of research on Academic staff (lecturers) perception of e-exams in Nigeria in an ODL environment since they are stakeholders in the evaluation process of their students. This study therefore seeks to take a critical look at how the adoption of electronic examination have assisted National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) in the evaluation phase of students study circle as well as the architecture for electronic examination as implemented by NOUN, which can be used by any other ODL institution. The study will zero in on the perception of the Academic Staff on e-examinations since Lecturers’ perceptions of technology have great influence on the acceptability of the technology (Fabry and Higgs, 1997; Keller and Cernerud, 2002; Murphy and Greenwood, 1998; Samuel and Bakar, 2006).105 questionnaires were administered to the Academic staff based on the five schools seeking their views on their level of computer literacy, e-exams administration compared to the pen and paper exams as well as the ease of use of the maple ta platform currently being used by NOUN. The findings show that 81.9% of the Lecturers are computer literate, while the remaining 28.4% are still getting use to basic computer usage skills which implies that most academic staff (lecturers) employed by National Open University of Nigeria are computer literate hence should appreciate e-exams. 63% of the Lecturers found maple ta (the software used) quite challenging while 47.3% found it very easy with time after training which implies that more can still be done to make the e-exam platform more user friendly for the Lecturers.
Index Terms—Open and distance learning, electronic examination, e-learning, maple ta, platform, intranet, course coordinators, study centre.
Francis Osang is with the Computing and Network Services, National Open University of Nigeria (e-mail: fosang@nou.edu.ng, bukie3osang@yahoo.com).
Cite: Francis Osang, "Electronic Examination in Nigeria, Academic Staff Perspective—Case Study: National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN)," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 304-307, 2012.