Improving Skill Acquisition of Electrical Installation and Maintenance Work Students through Collaboration between Technical Colleges and Industries in Plateau State

Abstract

The study was carried out to determined ways that could be used to improve skill acquisition of electrical installation and maintenance work students through collaboration between Technical Colleges and Industries in Plateau State. The study was carried out in Plateau State the north central part of Nigeria. The study adopted the descriptive survey research design. The population for the study consists of 58electrical industrial supervisors and 22 electrical technical teachers from selected Industries and Technical Colleges in Plateau State. No sampling for the manageable size. The instrument for data collection was 43 items structured questionnaire. The questionnaire was subjected to face - validation by three experts. One from Department of Vocational Teacher Education, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, one from technical colleges and one from the industries in Plateau State. Two research questions and a null hypothesis were formulated. Cronbach alpha method was used to determine the reliability coefficient of the instrument which yielded 0.85. Frequency count and weighted mean was used to analyzed the data for answering the research questions while t-test was used to test the null hypothesis of no significant different at 0.05 level of significance. The results showed that jointly organizing seminars, combine workshop by Technical Colleges and Industries is needed, assessment of training facilities of technical colleges to ensured adequate background in occupations required in industries; involving technical teachers/ instructors working on industrial machineries in production process so as to upgrade their knowledge and skill to keep abreast with new technological advancement. The study recommended among others that tool, equipment and machineries be made available to students to expose them during their course of training.