ICT - a new face of education

INTRODUCTION
Information and communication technology (ICT) has become an important source of innovation and improvement of efficiency for many sectors across the globe. In the education sector, particularly, the application of ICT has become a critical part of the learning process for university students both outside and inside the classroom setting. The government and other stakeholders in the education sector such as university management and researchers have invested millions of dollars to adopt ICT in the education system during the last two decades [1]. Most universities that have fully adopted ICT have recorded immense advancement in the application of ICT for the improvement of learning methods, teaching, research, and development.
The students’ academic performance refers to the enhancement of the students’ current state of knowledge and skills reflected in their GPA and also in the formulation of their personality and academic growth from lower levels of study to higher levels. The rationale of studying academic performance in the context of ICT adoption is to present a significant relationship that exists between the two variables.
This study is based on the data collected from four universities of Saudi Arabia, two of which, namely, King Abdulaziz University (KAU) and Damam University (DU), had fully adopted ICT in the educational processes while the other two, namely, Northern Border University (NBU) and Baha University (BAU), are in the process of adopting the ICT in their system. The rationale behind choosing these universities, which differ in size, geographical locations, number of students, number of courses, and also in terms of IT adoption is to frame a comprehensive research model with the possibility to generalize its findings.

Numerous studies have been undertaken to investigate the relationship between ICT and students’ performance; however, these studies have not been able to establish precisely the impact of ICT on students’ performance. These studies have posed two core challenges: first, it is difficult to determine the performance of students since the common approach used by many researchers accredits the curriculum responsible for the performance achievement in terms of grade [2]. However, Ali et al. [3] and Rose and Kadvekar [4] criticize these studies, blaming them of adopting a narrow approach, and suggest an alternative approach to consider the influence of ICT on students’ attitude, competency, and skills in addition to curriculum. This approach, according to the authors, has been campaigned as more extensive approach capable of yielding more accurate results compared with the narrow approach. However, this extensive approach demands a more comprehensive and complex strategy to focus and observe the labor market.

The second challenge lies in technological changes that are rampant where it is difficult to treat their impact different from their environment. This aspect therefore makes such research attract high contention on the ground that rapid changes in technology would render the used parameters ineffective; therefore, no conclusive results can be drawn from such studies [2]. Furthermore, many studies conducted on this subject are based on scientific studies of comparison. These studies establish that adoption of ICT technology in institutions of learning could improve the respective institution. Additionally, most of the studies have focused on cognitive results, including a few recent studies that have encountered effective results and a positive attitude towards ICT development.

Based on the identified research gaps and the problem statement, a need is felt to investigate the adoption of ICT in university education programs and examine its impact on the performance of the students. In this regard, the proposed research will carefully evaluate the manner and the extent to which universities have adopted the use of ICT and how the adoption of ICT has consequently made an impact on the performance of students. The proposed research will also identify key factors that contribute to performance of university students and how these factors are influenced by information communication technology.

This section presents a recap of the findings from earlier studies regarding the adoption of ICT in university education and its impact on the performance of university students. There have been various studies carried out to investigate the relationship between ICT and quality of education. These studies have focused on various such factors that have been influenced by ICT, but very few studies evaluate the impact of ICT adoption on the performance of university education. Similarly, these studies also give mixed findings about the impact of ICT on the university students’ performance.

For instance, Ellis and Loveless [5] indicate that higher education pedagogy can neither be isolated from academic achievement nor from the teaching process and innovation. The study affirms that the potential role of information and communication technology in higher education cannot be overlooked. Chan et al. [6], in another study, make a similar observation and assign great significance to the critical function of ICT in democratizing the university education and meeting new and dynamic demands of graduate students.

In a similar study, Sari and Mahmutoglu [7] observe that in order to bring a change in teaching methodology in a university, a paradigm shift is required that would recommend adoption of student-centered approaches. The new methodology, according to the authors, should aim at making the student an active element in the learning process.

The recent research frameworks for investigating the adoption of ICT in higher education have focused only on aspects related to performance in education. Such performance indicators have been utilized in these frameworks to establish how variables such as infrastructure and availability of other resources contribute to the impact. A few studies have also taken into account the institutional culture and implementation process at both initial and advanced levels [9]. The advanced levels, being national and international levels, have recorded a remarkable progress evidenced in the form of establishment of policies and regulations that support the integration of ICT in the education system [10]. The university administrators and faculty too look for the most appropriate approaches to harness the application of ICT in improving their teaching methods culminating into improvement of the students’ performance. Nonetheless, tangible achievement of all such efforts that should be demonstrated as results fuelled by the ICT or as impact of its adoption is not easily identifiable.

Additionally, there also exist numerous and significant studies that evaluate and track the efficiency of the ICT application and its impact on education. For instance, the Second Information Technology in Educational Study (SITES) is a study supported by the International Association for the Evaluation of Education Achievement (IEA) which has evaluated and described how ICT has successfully been applied across 26 countries globally [11]. This study seeks to ascertain how school administrations, faculty, and ICT teams deploy computers or ICT devices on various platforms. Although the study does not focus on the impact of ICT on the achievement of students, it approaches the subject under study from the perspective of teachers and their perception about the impact of ICT on students’ performance [12]. Similarly, Cruz-Jesus et al. [13] analyze several studies related to the impact that ICT has made on educational institutions in Europe. Their findings indicate that there is a limited and incomparable evidence of impact of ICT adoption on students’ performance. Irrespectively, none of these studies have been able to provide substantive findings to indicate that ICT adoption has positive impact on students’ performance.

Hypotheses of the Study

Based on the research model (Figure 1), the hypotheses are stated as follows:(1)ICT adoption in the sampled universities has yielded not only administrative benefits but also resulted in enhancing the students’ academic performance. With the introduction of Blackboard, the online learning management system (LMS), the faculty, and the students have come closer in their interactions. The study of courses, evaluation, and overall learning has been much better than previous years. Hence, hypothesis 1 (H1) frames as follows: H1: The ICT adoption has a significant relationship with student’s academic performance.(2)With the introduction of Blackboard, the online learning management system, the faculty are able to develop teaching tools, online exercises, and even midterm exams in a few cases. This has resulted in an increase in students’ GPA. The university too recognized this increase and accelerated their ICT services by increasing benefits and adding new features such as uploading class seminars, audios, and videos. Thus, students have an access to a greater amount of ICT material. This has also resulted in the increase of the ICT usage on average basis. Hence, hypothesis 2 (H2) runs as follows: H2: Student GPA has a positive influence on the relationship between ICT adoption and student academic performance.(3)A conservative environment prevails in all universities across Saudi Arabia which puts restriction on boys and girls to study together, without exception. Besides, girl students also have a restriction to attend some of the seminars, workshops, and other such in-house academic activities. However, in terms of ICT usage, there is no such restrictions. Hence, it has been noticed that girls depend upon the ICT services more than the boys. The number of usage of ICT and access to the LMS is higher among the girl students than the boys. This necessitated the increase in services and processes equally for the girls during the ICT adoption processes. Hence hypothesis 3 (H3) runs as follows: H3: Students’ gender significantly affects the relationship between ICT adoption and students’ academic performance.(4)A lot of students in universities study IT as a major and have an access to the latest software and hardware equipment, resources, and technological gadgets. Many of these students will also choose IT as their career option. Hence, a major responsibility of the university is to provide a full support to these IT aspirants in realizing their career dreams as well as proving them opportunities to acquire complete IT awareness and skills. The university therefore has to make an extra effort in the application of ICT in the education system. Hence, hypothesis 4 (H4) runs as follows: 

Recommendation and Conclusion

The findings of this study shall prove useful to the university administration and other parties involved in framing ICT policies for higher education. This study can be used as a reference point to understand that students wishing to enroll for a course in a university finalizes his or her decision based on the level of ICT application present in that university. Last but not least, this study will also act as a jump-start for other researchers who may like to conduct further research on this topic in future.

Information communication technology (ICT) is among the latest innovations that has revolutionized various operations in the world [31]. It is particularly important in the field of education since it has recently created such platforms and opportunities that have facilitated to some extent the acquisition of knowledge. This phenomenon has been highlighted in this study which indicates how students view ICT as a component of their study program. From the results of the questionnaire, it has been evident that a majority of the respondents value ICT, and each of them feels that they should have the gadgets to be able to adopt ICT more closely.

The study also mentions that a large number of students lack IT gadgets like smart phones and laptops. The reason is both the cost of gadgets and the internet accessibility. The public servers, besides the high cost, are very slow in speed which makes it difficult to utilize ICT platforms on a regular basis. Truly speaking, gadgets such as smart phones and laptops are critical in the access of ICT facilities and search information on the internet. The study also reveals that more than fifty percent of the students keep accounts on social media. This indicates that ICT performs a role more than academic for most university students. Besides searching for information from the internet, these university students make use of ICT for communication and social connections with friends and relatives. This explains why it is a major booster to academic performance of the students in the university. Often the same students can use ICT to facilitate discussions and feedback on academic matters from teachers, seniors, and colleagues. This kind of interaction is necessary to improve their study and research skills.

Another revelation of this study was that students who score higher grades in GPA are more interested in ICT than their colleagues who score lower grades. This is likely because ICT demands some basic knowledge for anyone to embrace it. Brighter students are therefore more likely to embrace ICT. Furthermore, ICT requires concentration of the participants, and this makes people to remain brighter to embrace the technology. It was also revealed in this study that social science students readily adopt ICT more than their other counterparts. This is because most of their courses involve social networking, and ICT becomes a major factor in regulating the social interactions. It is necessary to consider the fact that social sciences bring people together, and ICT too, through social networking, brings people closer and breaks the geographical barriers that hinder communication.