Stakeholders' perspectives of LIS students' ICT skills in Kuwait

In Kuwait, as elsewhere, computerised telecommunication is becoming a trend in producing daily work procedures and communicating. The use of the internet (emails, blogs and forums) and Short Message Service (SMS) has become essential in all organisations as means to communicate knowledge and information [1]. As a result, the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) skills of current Library and Information Science (LIS) students, the needs of employers, and the LIS curriculum in Kuwait were all investigated. In addition, the factors that had an impact on students' ICT skills were also investigated. Accordingly, the purpose of the research was to explore the ICT skills of LIS students in Kuwaiti Higher Education (HE) that were potentially defined by the job market. The research contributes to provide guidelines and recommendations to the Department of Library and Information Science (DLIS) in Kuwait and other LIS programmes' of the Arabian Gulf countries towards improving the content of their syllabus and redesigning their curriculum, since they share the same social, cultural and educational backgrounds. It will also investigate employers' perception and needs of LIS graduates' ICT skills and suggest ways for improvements. The research subjects were employers, LIS students, and teaching staff. The research data was collected through 54 semi-structured qualitative interviews; supplemented by three focus groups; and content analysis of relevant web sites, reports, and LIS syllabus to provide further documentation and analysis. The main findings of the research were: (1) overall the students had knowledge and basic ICT skills, but they lacked advanced searching and internet navigation skills. (2) the research investigated negative factors such as: unsuitable teaching and learning environment, negative attitudes, social influences and lack of resources; (3) the teaching staff most preferred teaching and training method was "one-to-one"; (4) the employers identified further ICT skills and non-ICT skills that LIS graduates should possess for employability; (5) gaps were found in the curriculum and in teaching and training the ICT courses such as: course content was inconsistent; did not reflect the needs of the job market and were outdated; an imbalance between theory and practical training, courses had different outline and little use of the English language hindered the students' ICT skills improvement and ICT use.