International Journal of Education and Development using ICT

International Journal of Education and Development using ICT > Vol. 10, No. 3 (2014)

E-counselling implementation: Students’ life stories and counselling technologies in perspective

Emmanuel Awuni Kolog, University of Eastern Finland
Erkki Sutinen, University of Eastern Finland
Marjatta Vanhalakka-Ruoho

Abstract
Given the current global trend of mimicking real life situations into digital counselling games and its related digital counselling platforms, we decided to contextually understand from the Ghanaian senior high school students, their life challenges arising from their life stories. The purpose is to use the findings as a basis to develop a digital counselling platform in our next study. Again, the study is intended to serve as a reference guide for researchers when designing a digital counselling platforms for senior high schools. The study also explores the extent to which ICT is currently being used to provide counselling services to students. Questionnaires and interviews were used to collect data from selected students and a school counsellor. The selected students were made to write their own life stories subjectively. The content of the data was qualitatively analyzed. After that, students’ financial status was identified as the main challenge to their academic pursuit, though several other difficulties were revealed in the study. Nevertheless, students were optimistic about the intended idea of a digital counselling game. The study also showed that students have little knowledge about the use of ICT in counselling and only uses email as a digital tool for counselling delivery.

Full Text: PDF

Research
Support Tool