Effect of emerging technology on academic achievement of students in the University of Cape Coast

Abstract

The main aim of this study was to find out the effect of emerging technology on academic achievement of students in the University of Cape Coast (UCC) in Ghana. The quantitative research survey design was employed to carry out the study. In all, four research hypotheses were formulated and tested using Chi-Square, Spearman’s correlation, independent sample t-test and regression analysis tools with the help of IBM SPSS Statistics software. The instrument was pilot tested at the University of Education, Winneba and a Cronbach’s alpha, α = 0.79 was obtained. Ethical clearance and introductory letters enabled the researcher to collect data, using a questionnaire from 357 respondents out of 400 questionnaires administered (response rate = 89.3%). Results obtained from the five departments selected showed that there was statistically significant difference across departments in the availability of tablets (p=0.004), free online courses (p=0.006), cloud computing (p=0.022), projectors and laptops (p=0.036), and calculators (p=0.000). Also, the study showed that there were weak negative and positive (-0.049 to 0.082) relationships between the extent to which respondents use emerging technologies especially, the use of internet to search for information was statistically significant (0.040). In addition, there is no significant difference in the performance of female and male respondents since p = 0.535 > α = 0.05. Finally, the respondents revealed that a decrease in the availability of emerging technologies increases their performance which supports the conceptual framework of the study. The study concluded that the availability of emerging technology does not affect academic performance.