Academic performance is influenced by many factors such as the number of hours attending lecture, doing homework, working and so on. However, in the age of modern life, technology is believed to have certain impact on student learning. Some researches propose that technology can help to improve academic performance . However, the question is that does technology has the same effect on academic performance of female and male students. The purpose of this study is to investigate how technology affect academic performance between male and female students? In this paper, 2x2 design model is applied. It means independent variables not only affect response variable but they also correlate with each other.
Variables:
Independent variable 1: Male & Female. They are between-subject design
Independent variable 2: Number of hours using Internet per week. They are within-subject design
Dependent variable: GPA
Hypothesis:
Effect: technology has stronger effect on male student’s academic performance and female’s student. Interaction between independent factors: male students spend more time on using Internet than female students
Null hypothesis: the difference between number of hours using Internet between male and female students does not have any impact on their academic performance
H0: β1=0, β2=0
Alternative hypothesis: the difference between number of hours using Internet between male and female students has impacts on their academic performance
H1: β1≠0, β2≠0
A linear regression function:
GPA=α+β1Male+β2Internet using weekly+ε
Male = 1 if a student is male and 0 if the student is female. GPA is ranked from 1 to 4 (lowest to highest).
Methodology
The method to collect data in this research is using questionnaire. The reason is that it is a cost-effective method and it is convenient for data collection. A group of 75 are invited to participate to the survey. Subjects are students from a university. They come from different departments and they are first year students. The main questions are about gender, numbers of hours and GPA.
Among 75 students, 37 are female students which account for 49.3% and 38 are male students which account for 50.7%. There is nearly no difference between the number of male and female students.
The descriptive statistic shows that the minimum GPA of students is 2 and the maximum is 4. On average, GPA of 75 students are 3.08. Similarly, students spend at least 3 hours per week for using Internet while some of them spend 23 hours for this activity. On average, they spend 11.56 hours weekly to use Internet.
The linear regression model:
GPA=α+β1Male+β2Internet using weekly+ε
Test the Null hypothesis:
H0: β1=0, β2=0
H1: β1≠0, β2≠0
Moreover, R-squared=0.051 means that the model can only explain 5.1% the response variable GPA. The possible reason may be omitted variables. Some significant variables can be excluded from the table.
In the coefficient model, p-value of gender variable is 0.857 which is larger than 5% significant level. Similarly, p-value of Internet using per week is 0.057 which is also above 0.05. It can be concluded that the number of Internet using per week does not have significant effect on academic performance and gender does not play role in student learning.
Limitations of the research:
Small R-squared and insignificant p-values indicate that some important variables are omitted from the model such as the major of student or the year of student (senior or junior) because technology can have different impacts on students of Information System program as opposed to students of Literature course . To overcome this problem, more independent variables should be included in the model so that the result can give a better prediction.
Implication: the research shows that gender and the time using Internet does not have a statistically significant effect on student’s academic performance, thus, the implication is that using technology does not significantly help students improve their academic result.
Further research: the impact of technology on education is has a wide range of aspects for research because its implication on the investment of universities and teachers as well as students into technology, therefore, it is very important to examine the effect of technology on academic result. However, the further research should consider more factors which may affect student learning.
Works Cited
Kathleen A., Krentler and Willis-Flurry Laura A. "Does Technology Enhance Actual Student Learning? The Case of Online Discussion Boards." Journal of Education for Business (2005): 316-321.
Sandeep, Chowdhry, Sieler Karolina and Alwis Lourdes. "A Study of the Impact of Technology-Enhanced Learning on Student." Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice, Vol 2 (3) (2014): 3-15.
