ICT in Student-Supervisor Communication: A Case Study at a Public Institution of Higher Learning in Malaysia

Lee , Nagarajah and Rozinah Jamaludin, and Ravichandran, P. (2009) ICT in Student-Supervisor Communication: A Case Study at a Public Institution of Higher Learning in Malaysia. In: ICI9 - International Conference on Information, 12-13 August 2009, Kuala Lumpur. (Submitted)

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Abstract

This study examined the use of ICT among postgraduate students and supervisors at University of Science Malaysia, Penang with special focus on student-supervisor communication. It employed a cross sectional survey design utilising an online questionnaire as data collection instrument. Students' and supervisors' competence in using the common MS Office programs, data analysis packages, and communication tools were gauged. Apart from that, their perceptions on the usefulness of ICT in student-supervisor communication were measured according to the following aspects: improves communication; strengthen student-supervisor relationship; add value to face to face interaction; and optimize student learning. A total of 81 students and 70 supervisors participated in this study. The results show that both students and supervisors were either intermediate or advance users as far as the basic Microsoft Office programs are concerned but not many of them have good knowledge on other programs such as data analysis packages. As for the open source applications, significantly higher percentage of supervisors (76%) use Moodle compared to students (42%), however the percentage of student users were significantly higher for Wiki, Facebook, Blog, and Friendster. All supervisors and students surveyed used email as the major communication tool, while considerable percentage of supervisors (64.3%) and students (79%) used SMS. On the perception towards the usefulness of ICT, the supervisors' ratings range from 4.32 to 5.44 on a scale of 1 to 7. The highest rating was for all "ICT improves communication" while the lowest was "ICT add value to face-to-face interaction". Female supervisors have a more favorable perception compared to male on all the four aspects assessed (p < 0.05). Supervisors with less then 10 years in USM gave significantly higher rating on the following aspects: "ICT improves communication" and "ICT optimizes students' learning", whilst students' ratings range from 4.84 (ICT add value to face to face interaction) to 5.55 (ICT improves communication). Students' demography did not have any bearing on their ratings. The t-test analysis indicated that supervisors' and students' ratings on the usefulness of ICT significantly differed only for "ICT strengthen student-supervisor relationship" aspect (p = 0.021); students' rating was higher than the supervisors'

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