Usage Pattern, Perceived Usefulness and Ease of Use of Computer Games among Malaysian Elementary School Students

摘要

ICT and computer games for academic purposes are aggressively promoted among school children in Malaysia. However, no study has investigated the use of computer games among primary school children and whether ease of use and perceived usefulness affected the actual use of computer games. Thus, the purpose of this study was to investigate the usage of computer games among elementary school children in Malaysia by location, school type and gender. Also investigated was whether ease of use and perceived usefulness effected the use of computer games following the prescriptions of the TAM model. The survey method was employed to collect the data and a questionnaire was administered to 201 primary school students from the National, Chinese and Tamil Schools in Penang. Data was analyzed using oneway ANOVA and Pearson correlation. The findings found that computer ownership and internet access by type of school, location and gender were high and were almost equal by percentage. However, the findings revealed that playing of computer games were at low levels among National school students and also by location and gender. In contrast, more than 50% of SKRJC and SKJRT students reported playing computer games at the medium and high levels. Also, students reported low overall perceptions towards perceived usefulness and ease of use of the games towards their academic performance and there were no significant differences in perceived usefulness and ease of use between the groups by demographic factors. However, further analysis by construct revealed that there was a significant difference in perception towards social value by location with students from urban schools reporting higher means, indicating that urban school students were playing the games as part of their social activities. Finally, following the predictions of the TAM model, it was found that Ease of use was significantly correlated to Perceived usefulness and that both ease of use and perceived usefulness were significantly correlated to actual use of the computer games. Thus, the study found that the government ICT policy was successful and that the adoption of computer games for academic purposes could be explained by the TAM model.