Abstract:
Students’ information management holds a strategic position in the effective and
efficient administration of the higher education system. The growing student populace
in institutions of higher learning has hastened the requirement for ICTs in order to
effectively process, store and retrieve reliable information in a swift and precise
manner.
The study aimed at examining the use of ICTs for students’ information management
in Technical Universities (TUs) in Ghana in ways that address information security
challenges and enhances the accuracy and sustainability of students’ information. The
study adopted mixed-method design and used a questionnaire to collect data from 136
respondents from three selected Technical Universities staff in Ghana. Interviews
were also conducted for two educational ICT providers who were purposively
sampled. Analyses of data were descriptive statistics (means and standard deviation)
of the quantitative data and thematic analysis of the qualitative data.
The study revealed that the three selected TUs have ICT related internal policies
governing the conduct of admissions, awards of grades and records management.
Also, the study revealed that the TUs use ICTs for application and admissions
processes, which ensure reliable data of students’ information, registrations, fees
payments, as well as the processing and reduced time spent on retrieving information.
Poor ICT maintenance culture and limited financial resources were key challenges in
using ICT for managing students’ information in the three TUs.
The study recommends that the TUs in Ghana must establish a state of the art,
appropriate, cost-effective and adequate ICT infrastructure. Again, the management of
the TUs must reinforce the automation of all institutional administration programs and build capacities for effective and sustainable implementation of optimum ICT based
on their needs. Also, the automation of students and lecturers attendance to lectures
and lecturers assessment by students must be deployed in the three selected TUs
