What do Students Think about PowerPoint? A Study of Attitudes

Research Highlights Results of the study indicated that the students showed positive attitudes towards Microsoft PowerPoint’s influence on their learning in English classroom and also their English instructors’ performance in the classroom. Also, no significant difference found between male and female students in terms of their attitude towards both aspects. ___________________________________________________________________________ Research Objectives The aim of this research is to find out the attitudes of Indonesian university students towards Microsoft PowerPoint’s influence on their learning in English classroom and their instructors’ performance in English classroom. The difference between male and female students on that degree will also be observed. Methodology The method used to gather the data used in the research was the survey method. The questionnaire used was a modified version of the questionnaire used in Yilmazel-Sahin’s (2007) research. The participants of the research were students of Universitas Satya Negara Indonesia. After the data was gathered, it was then analysed using descriptive statistics (to find the students’ attitudes) and Mann-Whitney U test (to determine whether statistically significant differences existed between the two groups). This type of test was chosen due to its ability to determine differences between two groups (Nachar, 2008). To avoid the Type I error in the Mann-Whitney U test, Bonferroni correction was applied (Napierala, 2012). Results The results of the data analysis showed that the students showed positive attitudes towards Microsoft PowerPoint’s influence on their learning in English. They moderately agreed that PowerPoint gives positive influence on their learning. The results were consistent with results from previous research (Yilmazel-Sahin, 2007), which showed that students generally had positive attitudes regarding PowerPoint’s influence on their learning. Another result showed was that students showed positive attitudes towards Microsoft PowerPoint’s influence on moderately agreed that PowerPoint helped their English instructors become better prepared and more organised, while they mostly agreed that PowerPoint helped increase the variation in the material delivered by their instructors. The results match the results from Yilmazel-Sahin’s (2007) and Nouri and Shahid’s (2005) research.   The results of Mann-Whitney U test showed that there was no significant difference between male and female students in terms of their attitudes towards Microsoft PowerPoint’s influence on both their learning in English classroom and their instructors’ performance in English classroom. This matches the results of research conducted by Kahraman, Çevik and Kodan (2011) which showed no significant difference between male and female participants regarding their attitudes towards PowerPoint usage in classes. Findings Students showed positive attitudes towards Microsoft PowerPoint’s influence on both their learning in the English classroom and their instructors’ performance in English classroom. No significant difference observed between male and female in terms of their attitudes towards both aspects.