Rural Students’ Skills and Attitudes Towards Information and Communication Technology

Problem statement: Despite various initiatives and programmes by the government to incorporate ICT in education, not much research has been done to evaluate the achievement of these initiatives and programmes, including ICT proficiency among students. This study fills in the gap of lack of current information pertaining to the Malaysian secondary school students’ ICT competencies, knowledge on internet and attitudes toward computer technology. Approach: Data for this study has been gathered from a survey on 585 students in Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Tengku Temenggung Ahmad (SMKTTA) in the rural district of Kundang Ulu, Johore. The specific area has been selected by Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia under one of its community service projects.The instrument used was a questionnaire comprised of demographic variables and three other sub-scales. The sub-scales are software and hardware usage; motivation for self study and ICT usage competency and Internet usage and safety awareness. Results: Results show that generally, students have moderately positive attitudes toward ICT, have low to moderate level of ICT competencies and have limited knowledge on internet. Conclusion: Findings from this study have implications to the approach of teaching and learning of ICT subjects, their evaluation and assessment and future initiative related to ICT education and infrastructure development towards creating a well-connected society. It is recommended that schools provide enough facilities for students’ hands-on experiences. Teachers should incorporate productive computing activities in their teaching such as using spreadsheet, database and programming, besides purposive web searching. Rural internet centres should also be established. Evaluation, monitoring and maintainance of ICT programs is a must to ensure their effectiveness and efficiency. The utmost end result would be the emergence of more ICT proficient personnel who will contribute to the development of the country.