**10. Benefits of ICT integration into education**

This study indicated that new technologies spur spontaneous interest more than tradition approaches of learning. Both Lecturers and students from the two institutions indicated that they would prefer the use of ICT in education. 78% of students who answered questionnaire questions indicated that they would prefer to have lectures and other teaching material delivered using ICT. One learner from the MSU Harare campus indicated that instead of lecturers having to travel to campus they could just use ICT facilities such as Google class, Skype or the E- learning accounts of students to deliver teaching and learning material.

ICT promotes collaborative and cooperative learning. This happens when there is interaction and cooperation among teachers and students regardless of distance. ICT increases contact among learners and facilitates the level of communication between these students and their lecturers. The results from this research indicated that as numbers of students increase, lecturers find it convenient to adopt ICT as it becomes difficult to have personal contacts with the students. This is confirmed by Lau-rillard1994 who posits that ICT provides opportunities for departments, faculties and college and universities to communicate relatively easily.

ICT promotes creative learning in that it gives students greater chances of being independent and this gives them room to be innovative. Students at both MSU and SUZA confirmed that the adoption of ICT in learning has given them the independence in that if one misses a lecture they can still catch up if the learning material is posted on their e-learning accounts or other platforms such as Google class, WhatsApp and Facebook. The adoption of e learning provides institutions of learning such as SUZA and MSU with flexibility of time and place of delivery or receipt of learning information. Traditional teaching methods are relatively more expensive than the modern ones. One reason traditional teaching cost more than e-learning is because it involves more staff expenses. Faculties that used ICT had fewer teaching assistants as compared to those departments who used traditional ways of teaching. A departmental chairperson when interviewed commented that with the introduction of e-learning, the need for someone to always physically attend lecturers was now a thing of the past as it was now possible to post learning material on e-learning portals and students would access even without getting to the lecture room.

*Integration of ICT into Education: Lessons Learnt at the State University of Zanzibar… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.98441*
