Teacher-Student Communication with ICT

This study was guided by two research questions and its implementation was based on a model of analysis. This model of analysis allowed the design of a questionnaire survey whose application to students and teachers of the University of Aveiro enabled the collection of data that, after descriptive and inferential statistical treatment, produced results corresponding to the indicators of the analysis model.

This section presents the answers to the two research questions and presents an overall discussion of the results.

First Research Question

The first research question was the following: For what purposes and functions of students and teachers use communication technologies to communicate with each other? The indicators that allow an answer to this question to be obtained are those of the characterization of communication technology dimension of the model of analysis, corresponding to question 5 of the questionnaire. In this question, each student indicated, from a list of communication technology categories (Table 1), which ones they used to communicate with their teachers, and each teacher indicated which, from a list of communication technologies categories, they used to communicate with their students. The results show that the communication technologies most used by students and teachers are publishing and sharing technologies and electronic mail. In the case of electronic mail, usage is especially high, which corresponds to what would be expected, and which corresponds to the most used communication technologies for interpersonal communication. In fact, the use of electronic mail to carry out asynchronous and interpersonal communication is extremely widespread in higher education institutions and in society in general.

Other communication technologies that allow for interpersonal communication show relevant levels of use by students and teachers, such as instant messaging and videoconferencing and voice systems, but significantly less than the use of electronic mail. It is expected that during the COVID-19 pandemic period, the instant messaging and videoconferencing and voice systems will have been used by more students and teachers than before that period. In fact, applications such as Zoom (videoconferencing and voice systems) or Microsoft Teams (videoconferencing and voice systems and other functions) were systematically used during this period to teach classes and to carry out other activities that were previously carried out in person. It will be interesting to compare the levels of instant messaging and videoconferencing and voice systems utilization before and after the COVID-19 pandemic period.

Publishing and sharing technologies are also used by large numbers of students and teachers. These communication technologies allow the publication and sharing of content, which corresponds to a role that teachers usually play in higher education institutions. It is interesting to see that the level of use of this category of communication technology is much higher by teachers than by students. In fact, one of the most common concerns of teachers is the provision and sharing of pedagogical content, which is normally obtained and consumed by their students. Apparently, it would make sense that the level of use of publishing and sharing technologies was not very different for teachers and students, so we propose, as a possible explanatory hypothesis, that at least some portion of students understood this dimension to refer to sharing content and not to refer to its consumption. Another hypothesis is that teachers also publish and share content through other categories of communication technology, but it is not possible to formulate an answer with the available data. The remaining communication technologies also show relevant levels of use, being systematically higher by teachers than by students.

In general, it is found that students and teachers make significant use of communication technologies, with this use being especially evident in applications that allow interpersonal communication, emphasizing the use of email and applications that allow one to publish and share pedagogical content. This is in accordance with previous results, confirming that older forms of communication between students and teachers are being replaced. For example, pedagogical content traditionally available on paper in copy centers or bookshops are being replaced by digital content published and available on digital platforms, and personal communication with teachers, for example in teacher's offices, is being replaced with more direct and immediate digital applications.

Second Research Question

The second research question was the following: What are the expectations of students and teachers when using communication technologies to communicate? The indicators that allow an answer to this question to be obtained are those related to the dimensions of use acceptance and of use expectation of the analysis model, corresponding to questions 6 to 12 of the questionnaire. These questions asked about various items that were taken from theories such as the technology acceptance model and the confirmation of expectations model (Table 1). The collected data are processed and described in the results section.

Before answering the second research question, it is important to emphasize that only the communication technologies that each participant indicated they used in question 5 were listed when they answered questions 6 to 12.

Some main ideas emerge from the analysis of the results. First, publishing and sharing technologies and electronic mail are the two communication technologies that show higher rates in several indicators, which is in accordance with the answer to the first research question, i.e., publishing and sharing technologies and electronic mail are clearly the two most used communication technologies by both students and teachers. The results give further credence to that, adding very positive indicators about the use of both of these communication technologies in terms of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived performance due to their use, intentions to continue use, and frequency of use. All of these indicators are from the use acceptance dimension of the model of analysis and so they suggest a good level of acceptance of publishing and sharing technologies and electronic mail.

The results are not so high with regard to the other communication technologies; however, in general, they are positive. There are just a few cases with negative results, often regarding the use of social networks, which seemed to be confirmed when participants asked about continuing using it to communicate, as 14.6% of students and 4.6% of teachers answered that they did not intend to continue to use it. This agrees with the frequency of use, with 33.7% of students and 17.5% of teachers answering that they never or rarely used this communication technology to communicate with their students/teachers.

Second, two other indicators are specific of the use expectation dimension, namely confirmation (of expectations) and satisfaction. The results regarding the use of publishing and sharing technologies and electronic mail are not as positive as they were on the previous indicators. In the case regarding the confirmation of expectations (question 11), the most frequent answer was "agree" and not "fully agree" by large margins, both in the case of students and in the case of teachers. This suggests that for a significant group of students and teachers, the expectations of using publishing and sharing technologies and electronic mail were not completely fulfilled, suggesting that something more was expected. This is similar to the last indicator regarding satisfaction. In fact, the most frequent answer was "satisfied", and not "very satisfied" by large margins, both in the case of students and in the case of teachers. This suggests that a significant group of students and teachers were not very satisfied using publishing and sharing technologies and electronic mail.

Interestingly, these results regarding expectations and satisfaction in the use of publishing and sharing technologies and electronic mail are similar to the other communication technologies considered, which means that, in general, students and teachers could feel more convinced about their expectations and more satisfied with using of communication technologies to communicate.

Third, analyzing the results of the inference tests, it is observed that, with few exceptions, the students' responses and the teachers' responses are significantly different in relation to the use of two communication technologies, namely the publishing and sharing technologies and electronic mail. These significant differences are observable in several items analyzed, with more favorable values being systematically obtained by the teachers than by the students:

• Teachers have a significantly more favorable opinion than students regarding the usefulness of publishing and sharing technologies and electronic mail (question 6);

• Teachers have a significantly more favorable opinion than students regarding the intention of future use with regard to publishing and sharing technologies and electronic mail, with a similar trend for collaborative technologies (question 9);

• Teachers have a significantly more favorable opinion than students in relation to the current use (frequency) of publishing and sharing technologies and electronic mail, with a similar trend for all communication technologies considered (question 10);

• Teachers have a significantly more favorable opinion than students in relation to expectations, that is, in relation to the fact that the result of using publishing and sharing technologies and electronic mail is in accordance with their expectations, with a trend similar for videoconferencing and voice systems and social networks (question 11);

• Teachers have a significantly more favorable opinion than students regarding the satisfaction of using publishing and sharing technologies and electronic mail (question 12).

What do these results suggest? In the specific case of frequency of use, this result seems to be natural, given that in general, each teacher has a high number of students with whom they communicate and, on the contrary, in general, each student has a reduced number of teachers. Consequently, it seems natural that teachers use these communication technologies significantly more often than students. In relation to the other aspects, it is rather difficult to formulate an objective answer, although this could eventually be obtained by conducting in-depth interviews with students and teachers. Still, some hypotheses can be suggested, such as:

• These differences are due to the generational differences between students and teachers, who have different perspectives on the academic use of publishing and sharing technologies and electronic mail, namely in aspects such as the usefulness or intention of future use, among others;

• These differences are due to the fact that the study was about the use of communication technologies in an academic environment and not in an informal and more personal environment.

Fourth, regarding the ease of use (question 7) and the performance of the use (question 8) of publishing and sharing technologies and electronic mail, there are no statistically significant differences between the students' answers and the teachers' answers, which occurs in all categories of communication technologies considered, with the exception being the ease of use social networks. This is not surprising, because students and teachers are generally expected to be frequent and literate users of communication technologies, both in academic and in non-academic contexts.

Concluding Remarks

To conclude this article, some limitations are presented, as well as the main implications of the results and some directions for future research.

Limitations

This study has some limitations, namely the fact that it was only carried out at one university and, therefore, its results cannot be generalized. However, these results have some relevance, as data samples of good sizes were obtained, and some trends were confirmed through inference tests.

Another limitation arises from the fact that the data are only quantitative and, therefore, it is difficult to carry out a deeper discussion, namely by exploring the reasons or motivations that justify the results.

Implications and Future Research

The main implications of these results are that publishing and sharing technologies and electronic mail continue to be the most used communication technologies by students and teachers, suggesting that this use will not decline soon. However, other communication technologies were also revealed to be widely used and accepted with good levels of confirmation of expectations and satisfaction, which also indicates the continuation or even the increase in their use.

The COVID-19 pandemic period did, however, bring some changes, as communication technologies were used even more frequently during this period in order for students and teachers to communicate with each other. Some applications, such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams, were used systematically to teach classes, and other technologies, such as social networks or instant messaging, were also used more frequently. Thus, the question that seems to arise is whether in the post-pandemic period, the communication technologies used, their acceptance of use, and their expected use will be similar to as they were at the pre-pandemic period, or if they will evolve to account for the uses that were made during the pandemic period; in other words, the question is whether the pandemic period caused significant changes in these indicators that will extended beyond that period.

Thus, it seems important to replicate this study (completely carried out in the pre-pandemic period) in the post-pandemic period, at the same university and directed equally at students and professors. This study will thus produce comparable results, although this comparison cannot be isolated from other contextual factors, namely social, technological, and educational factors, that also influence the evolution of the use of communication technologies. These results may be advantageously complemented with other qualitative data.