Planning Competency of Administrative Staff at Sultan Qaboos University in the Process of a Safe Transformation into Electronic University

Abstract

This study aims at investigating the planning competency of the administrative staff at Sultan Qaboos University for a safe transformation into becoming an electronic university. The study also aims at determining whether the level of competency as measured by the responses of the participants varies according to gender, hierarchical position, years of experience in administration, and level of computer literacy. A third aim is to reveal the level of association between the responses of participants and the kind of use of electronic service provided by the university. Towards those ends the analytical descriptive methodology is employed. A 45-item questionnaire is the main instrument to gather data from 91 participants. Reliability co-efficient reached 0.92. Means, standard deviation, multiple analysis of variance and Chi-Square are used to treat the data. The findings show that 57% of the items are marked as “high” (4.43- 3.75) whereas 43% of the items are marked as ‘average’ (3.74-3.08). This suggests that the university is in the process of a smooth and safe transformation into becoming an electronic university. The findings also show statistically significant differences at the 0.05 level between holders of intermediate diploma and holders of Master’s Degree in Computer on the ‘values and interpersonal’ and ‘future forecasting’ domains. Gender, position, and years of experience did not result into statistically significant responses between respondents. The study concluded with recommendations and suggestions.