Influence of ICT Usage on Students’ Academic Performance at Tertiary Level of Education: A Case Study of Makerere University Kampala

Abstract

The main objective of the study was to investigate the influence of ICT on the students’ academic performance at tertiary level of education. The following specific objectives guided the study; (𝑖) to determine the extent to which students have adopted ICT (total number of hours spent on Wi-Fi either with smartphone or laptop); (𝑖𝑖) find out the various types of ICT tools used by students at Makerere University; (𝑖𝑖𝑖) identify the various uses of internet by University students at Makerere and to (𝑖𝑣) establish the impact of number of hours spent online (frequency of use) on academic achievement. To operationalize these objectives, the researcher adopted a cross-sectional survey design because the study intends to pick a few representative students of the entire Makerere University one at a time without going back to the place for more data. With the aid of simple random sampling (SRS) method, 100 university undergraduate students from the School of Statistics and Planning deemed to have information concerning Wi-Fi connection spots around the university context were selected. The study revealed that the majority of the students (80.0%) used smartphones to access internet through Wi-Fi spots created within the university premises. The spearman’s correlation revealed that there is a very weak positive insignificant relationship between number of hours spent online and the student’s current CGPA (rho = 0.1840; p = .0669). In other words, the number of hours spent online has been found to be independent as related to the student’s academic performance. Type of place of residence has a serious bearing on academic performance, this is due to the fact that those students residing within the university had more access to internet using the Wi-Fi spots installed at the university. There is a need to maintain internet connection in the University and connect more computers to the internet.