Managing workload and lecturers effectiveness in Southwest Nigerian Universities

This study ascertained the extent to which components of workload management predict lecturers’ effectiveness of university lecturers in Southwest, Nigeria. Descriptive research of survey design was adopted for the study. A sample of 600 university lecturers was selected for the study through purposive sampling technique. Two instruments namely ‘’Managing Workload Questionnaire (MWLQ)’’ and “Lecturers’ Effectiveness Questionnaire (LEQ)’’ were used for data collection. The face and content validities of the instruments were established. The two instruments were validated by the experts through face and content validity. The reliability of the instruments was done using test-re-test method with MWLQ and LEQ yielding the reliability coefficients of 0.88 and 0.85 respectively. The data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. All the hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Results showed that: teaching a large class, supervising more than five students’ theses/dissertations, and projects in a semester, handling more than five courses in a semester among others are the factors that constitute workload in university system. It was also revealed that the strategies to manage workload such as: manage time appropriately, Prioritise the various works, always taking a short break in whatever work one does, appointment of lecturers into various offices should be well distributed, analysis of one's responsibilities adequately, adequate payment of overtime allowance to lecturers to enhance health checkups, earned academic allowance should be regularly paid to lecturers, lecturers who already occupied in a position should not be engaged in more other appointments, efforts to employ more lecturers to avoid one lecturer teaching very large classes, lecturers should learn to say no when they are to face with so many works jointly contribute to lecturers’ effectiveness in Southwest Nigerian Universities. Based on the findings of the study, recommendations were made among which is that; government should ensure that universities in Southwest Nigeria are adequately staffed to reduce the level of workload on university lecturers.