What hinders the use of ICT among academic staff at Yemen’s public universities?

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in Yemen public universities. Three academic staff from Hodeida, Amran and Thamar universities were the participants of this study. The qualitative method was employed with one to one interview as an instrument of the data collection. Thematic analysis was employed to identify the patterns that reflect the factors that affecting ICT use in the universities. The findings revealed that the use of ICTs in Yemen’s universities still depends on lecturer’s self-initiative. The lecturer who has skills of using ICT appeared to have positive attitude towards the use of ICT in their teaching. There is no any type of social influence on lecturer’s use of ICT in their teaching. The poor infrastructure, poor facilitating condition and lack of the technical support stand as major barriers of ICT integration in Yemen’s Universities. All forms of online communication is totally absent in all the three universities. The participants of this study urged their universities top management to provide a proper facilitating condition and training programs to enable their academic staff to cope up with 21st century teaching and technologies.