International Journal of Education and Development using ICT

International Journal of Education and Development using ICT > Vol. 2, No. 4 (2006)

Educative uses of the ICT, technological skills and academic performance of the Venezuelan university students (Barineses): a causal perspective

Carlos E. Godoy Rodríguez, Universidad Ezequiel Zamora UNELLEZ

Abstract
The general objective of the present research was to analyze the relations between the educatives uses of the ICT, levels of skills in the handling of the technology (ICT Skills Index) and academic performance of the Barineses students university, in order to propose a model of causal relations that represents suitably, the effects of the use of the technology with academic aims on the results in the studies. It was a random, cross-sectional and anonymous study that follows the habitual evolution of the research process: it begins being a descriptive research, and finishes as explanatory study. The sampling was by conglomerates and stratified, in three stages. The sample for the study consisted of 410 Barineses students university. A questionnaire applied themselves was used. The statistical analysis was carried out in two phases: descriptive univariado and with structural equations modelling. The proposed causal model during the development of the research, revealed significant influences of several indicators on the scores obtained in the ICT Skills Index; not happening the same in relation to the influence of this one last index on the Academic performance of the Barineses students university. This result seems to support, the often outstanding thing in literature on the subject, in relation to the difficulties found until now by the researchers, to demonstrate the effectiveness of the use of the ICT on the results in the studies; and it again places in centre of the debate the well-known paradox of the non significance (To see Russell, 1999, for a more detailed analysis of this phenomenon).

Full Text: HTML | PDF

Research
Support Tool