GASPRO International Journal of Eminent Scholars

Abstract The purpose of the study was to determine the internet tools application competencies required by secretaries for information exchange in Federal Universities in South-South, Nigeria. Seven specific objectives was identified, seven research questions was raised and seven null hypotheses was formulated to guide the study. The study adopted a survey research design and was carried out in the South-South zone of Nigeria. The population of the study was 1,026 secretaries from which 287 secretaries were sampled using the Taro Yamane formula. The secretaries were categorized into, administrative, personal and confidential secretaries. The instrument for data collection was developed by the researcher and titled Questionnaire on Internet Tools Application Competencies for Information Exchange (QITACLE). The instrument was face validated by three research experts from University of Uyo, Uyo. The reliability of the instrument was obtained using the Cronbach’s Alpha test which yielded reliability co-efficient of .89. Out of the 287 copies of questionnaire distributed 277 were returned with valid data. This gave response rate of 96.51 percent. Mean statistic was used to answer the research questions and Analysis of Variance used to test the null hypotheses at .05 alpha level. The study revealed that all the internet tools application competencies identified by the study are moderately required by secretaries for information exchange. The study revealed from the hypotheses that email, World Wide Web, and file transfer protocol are significantly required. Based on these findings, it was concluded that secretaries require internet tool application competencies for information exchange in Federal Universities in South-South, Nigeria. Based on this conclusion, it was recommended among others that University authorities and management of other organizations should train their secretaries and updates their knowledge and skills on internet tools application for information exchange and other secretarial functions such as video conferencing. Key Words: Information exchange, Secretaries, e-mail, File Transfer Protocol, Twitter