LIS Students' ICT Skills in Kuwait: Perspectives of Employers, Teaching Staff and Students

In Kuwait and elsewhere, developments in electronic information resources have led to the demand for employees with ICT (information and communication technology) skills especially in information handling institutions. There is, therefore, a need to prepare the students for this workplace. As a result, the ICT skills of current LIS (library and information science) students; the needs of employers and the LIS curriculum in Kuwait were explored. In addition, the factors that had an impact on students’ ICT skills were also investigated. The paper presents the results and analysis of 225 LIS students’ questionnaires carried out to collect in-depth quantitative data on the students’ ICT skills level. In addition, 54 analyzed semi-structured interviews were conducted to present qualitative data on the views and explanations of LIS students, teaching staff and employers on the implementation of ICT skills into the LIS curriculum in Kuwaiti HE (higher education). The quantitative data analysis suggested that the majority of the students (71%) indicated that they had an intermediate ICT skills level, database maintenance and Web page construction skills were not practiced by students; whereas the “search and retrieve information from Internet” was the most frequently used skill by 88% of the students. The qualitative data suggested factors that negatively affected the students’ ICT skills improvement, such as lack of motivation, ICT courses’ content and ICT skills training. In addition, the current students’ ICT skills did not satisfy the need of the job market, the findings suggested that they should possess other skills, in addition to ICT skills, to become information professionals.

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