Information, Communication & Technology Usage and Students’ Academic Performance in Public Secondary Schools in Rwanda

Abstract

The effectiveness of Information communication and Technology (ICT) usage makes effective improvement in terms of school productivity and students’ performance. The purpose of this paper therefore was to establish the influence of ICT usages on students’ academic performance in selected public secondary schools in Nyamasheke district in Rwanda. The target population was 297 people and   170 respondents as sample size got by using Yamane formula. Descriptive and correlation research designs were employed. Questionnaire, guided interview and education document analysis review was used as data collection instrument. The quantitative data was analyzed using IBM SPSS software version 21. Qualitative data was analyzed thematically.  The findings revealed that majority of students corresponding with 58.9% of teachers indicated that their students never use ICT laboratory while 27.2% of teachers revealed that their students use ICT laboratory once in a week which reduces the level of students’ academic performance. It was revealed that when ICT usage implement effectively, influences the level students’ academic performance at 77.2% and the remaining 22.8% can be affected by other variables. It was also noted that that there is a statistical significance high positive relationship between ICT Usage and students’ academic performance thus P-value = .024 which less than 0.05 as the level of significance and Pearson coefficient of correlation r = .684 which is high. This paper recommends that the Ministry of Education should provide the adequate infrastructures of that can enhance the usage of ICT in daily teaching and learning activities in order to improve the ICT literacy in schools and school productivity. Keywords: ICT usage, Secondary School, Students’ academic performance, Public Secondary Schools, Rwanda