ICT in life of students at the Latvia university of Life sciences and Technologies

Abstract

Information and communication technology (ICT) plays an important role in our daily activities. ICT can have positive and negative impacts on organizations, people and society. Rapid access to information, improved access to education, new job opportunities, new tools etc. may be mentioned as a positive impact of ICT on people, but the decrease in personal interaction and the decline in physical activity may be mentioned as negative aspects of ICT. Also, the impact of ICT on society is both positive, such as improved communication across the world, increasing educational opportunities, and negative, such as the digital divide between those who have access to information and who cannot have, as well as the availability of a large number of incorrect and misleading information. Students spend a lot of their time using the ICT or the Internet facilities. The objectives of the study are: i) to explore how and how much of their time students spend by using ICT; ii) to find out the relationship between students' use of ICT for an academic and non-academic purpose and their performance; iii) to identify which educational software students know and use. In order to achieve the objectives of this study, more than 150 second-year students of the Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies were surveyed. The first part of the questionnaire focused on students' time distribution per week. The results of the study show that the students of LLU spend using ITC for more than 25 % of the time per week, about 30 % of the time is devoted to sleeping and rest, about 20 %-to learning. The second part of the questionnaire focused on exploring how much time students spend for academic, non-academic and social use of ICT. The results show that about 63 % of the time spent on the Internet is used for non-academic purposes. The third part of the questionnaire provided information on students' knowledge, skills and habits to use different educational software. The study suggests that proper steps should be taken by the academic or related institutions to promote the use of ICT for focusing on academic purposes, so that the students may benefit more from using ICT.