International Journal of Indonesian Studies Volume 1, Issue 3 | Page 120
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INDONESIAN STUDIES
SPRING 2016
The Impact of Information Communication and Technology on Students'
Academic Performance: Evidence from Indonesian EFL Classrooms
Arzal
Biodata: Arzal is one of the academics at the Department of English Education, Faculty of
Letters and Humanities, State University of Gorontalo, Indonesia. He is currently
undertaking his PhD at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He obtained his Master of
Applied Linguistics from the University of Melbourne. Email: [email protected]
Abstract
The present study examined the impact of Information Communication Technology [ICT]
on a group of university students' academic performance in an Indonesian English as a
Foreign Language (EFL) classroom. As the platform of the ICT usage in this current study,
English learning websites was used as the independent variable. Academic performance
(students' score on pre and post test) was used the dependent variable. The participants in
the study were 60 students of the Department of Public Health at the State University of
Gorontalo, Indonesia, i.e an experimental group of 30 students (n=30) and a control group
of 30 students (n=30). They took English courses as one of the compulsory subjects in the
university curriculum. This study used a mixed method of a quasi-experimental and a
qualitative interview approaches. Based on the result of the quantitative method of data
collection, t-tests of this study indicated that students in the experiment group performed
significantly better than the students in the control group. Test results also showed that
there was a significant difference between students' score on the pre- and post-test. The
students' score in the post test and post test in the control group, however, were not
significantly different. As interview results showed, participants expressed their positive
learning experience with technologies, growing motivation in English learning, and positive
feeling and confidence on their language performance.
Key words: ICT, English for Foreign Language, English learning websites
Introduction
The demand for teachers to be confident and competent users of ICT for their personal and
professional lives is continually growing due to rapid changes in Information Communication
technology (ICT). Teachers of English are facing a growing pressure to be more professional
and highly capable of creating more engaging classrooms in order to respond to their
students' needs in the digital era. ICT integration, therefore, should be an integral part of
their teaching instructions (Hubbard, 2013). Over the past few decades, numerous studies
have confirmed the benefits of ICT in language teaching and learning. The effective use of
technology in teaching and learning increases the benefits of ICT to enable students to
become active learners and to develop their problem solving, critical-thinking, and creativity
skills (Hubbard, 2013; Jung, 2006; Kean, Embi, & Yunus, 2012; Klimova & Semradova, 2012).
In addition, ICT offers students and teachers a more flexible and broader access to
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