Sprouting employability skills in building technology students’ using cooperative learning approaches in Nigerian Polytechnics

This study investigated the areas of cooperative learning approaches for sprouting employability in polytechnic building technology students’ in Nigeria for the expertise of practice upon graduating from school using descriptive survey research design. Two research questions and four null hypotheses guided the study. The population for the study consisted of 99 building technology lecturers that offer building technology programmes in Federal, State and Private Polytechnics in South-East and South-South Nigeria. Since the population was not too large, there was no sampling. The instrument used for data collection was a 36-item questionnaire derived from the literature reviewed. Five experts validated the instrument. Cronbach alpha reliability method was used to determine the reliability of the instrument and a reliability coefficient of 0.87 was obtained. The research questions were answered using Mean statistic, while the null hypotheses were tested using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and z-test at .05 level of significance. The findings revealed among others that lecturers utilize all the aspects of cooperative learning approaches; and that all the employability skills required by building technology students/graduates can be developed using cooperative learning approaches. Based on the findings of this study, it was recommended among others that assessment of building technology students should be all-encompassing to include the development and mastery of employability skills for functionality in the ever dynamic and global workplace.