An Assessment of Use and Currency of Information on the Undergraduate Students’ Web Portal at the University of Ilorin

Abstract

A portal is a public or private space that gives users the ability to organize information, readily access that information, manage documents, share calendars and enable efficient collaboration, all in a familiar, browserbased
environment. The introduction of web portal in Universities in Nigeria, especially at the University of Ilorin has been considered a worthwhile development. However, since the creation for the individual undergraduate students; no study has been carried out to examine its uses and the currency of information on it. In the light of this, this study examined the use and currency of information on the undergraduate students’ web portal at the University of Ilorin. The study adopted a survey design. The target population was the University of Ilorin Undergraduate students from which a total of two hundred and fourty (240) were selected through simple random sampling technique to represent the sample for the study. Four resesarch questions were developed. The results reveal among others that majority of the undergraduate students use the web portal to check their results, register their courses, print their school fees receipts and view their current session charges. Similarly, majority of the undergraduate students rated the contents on their web portal as excellent and agreed that the contents are always very current. An overwhelming majority of the  respondents (99.2%) were satisfied with the web portal at the University of Ilorin while the common problems encounter with the access to and use
of web portal in the University include connection failure, slow server, power outage and processing errors. Base on these findings, the study  recommends that the University of Ilorin management should enhance the
information content on the students’ web portal by including chatting icon so as to facilitate the exchange of information between the university management, the staffs and students as this would assist in adddressing
important issues on time regardless of the users location. The study concluded web portal is a very nice discovery and very good information system which is contributing a great deal to the information dissemination
between the university authority and the students and between the students and the authority.