Pages: (118-136 )
Abstract
The changing academic environment of universities especially in terms of the adoption of technology into the teaching and learning process will continue to enable new forms of communication and collaboration in order to expand existing knowledge or ultimately create new knowledge. The study investigated the use of collaborative tools for knowledge sharing by postgraduate students (PGS) in selected universities in South-West, Nigeria. The population consisted of seven thousand nine hundred and ninety seven (7997) PGS from the oldest (federal, state and private) universities in South-West Nigeria. Both multistage and purposive sampling technique was adopted in selecting the respondents across the universities. Using proportionate sampling of 70% a sample size of 980 was arrived at. The questionnaire was administered to 980 postgraduate students. However, only 744(76%) copies of the questionnaire were returned and found useful for the study. The findings revealed that WhatsApp (X̅=3.70) is highly utilised while Zoom (X̅=3.37), Facebook (X̅=3.02), Academia (X̅=3.00), electronic mail (X̅=2.99), are moderately utilized. Also, Newsletters (X̅=2.49), LinkedIn (X̅=2.19), and Facebook Messenger (X̅=2.29) were weakly utilized for knowledge sharing by the PGS. Major challenges affecting knowledge sharing and use of collaborative tools by the PGS were inadequate time (ẋ= 3.14) and a high rate of internet subscriptions (ẋ= 3.12). The study concludes that postgraduate students are yet to fully embrace collaborative tools for knowledge sharing due to epileptic power supply, high rate of internet subscription, and fear of losing ownership of the knowledge among other impediments. Hence, the study recommends that there is a need for universities as knowledge-based economy that creates and expands existing knowledge to provide internet access to enhance more knowledge sharing and collaborative activities online by the PGS without financial restriction to do so.
Keywords: Collaborative Tools, Knowledge Sharing, Postgraduate Students, Nigeria,