Incorporation of ICT in Malaysian Schools
Malaysian education was expected to move into the era of information and communications technology (ICT) when the Smart School initiative was introduced by the government in 1997. However, students’ acceptance and teachers’ readiness for e-learning in Malaysian public schools only started in 2004 (Asirvatham et al., 2005). Since then, the Malaysian government continues to provide substantial funding to schools across the country for ICT development. According to the 2021’s National Budget, a total of RM500 million will be allocated to ensure Internet connectivity for 430 schools nationwide under the Jendela programme and another RM1.5 billion will be allocated to improve internet connectivity under the Prihatin Network programme to benefit school children (Rajaendram, 2020).
Despite the government’s initiatives, the ICT usage in public schools had never been satisfactory. According to a survey conducted by the Ministry of Education Malaysia, approximately 80% of school teachers spent less than one hour a week using ICT. The teachers were ill-prepared in terms of integrating ICT in their teaching due to lack of training (Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013 - 2025). Arokiasamy et al. (2014) also found that many secondary school teachers in Malaysia did not have adequate ICT skills. However, when COVID-19 struck Malaysia in March 2020, primary and secondary school teachers across the country were required to adopt online teaching regardless of whether they were ready or not.
The pandemic led to the closure of Malaysian schools in early 2020. In response, the Ministry of Education (MoE) initiated efforts to promote and enhance online learning. Internet access for schools was improved and infrastructure development and telecommunication network were accelerated and upgraded. PdPR (Teaching and Learning at Home) was also introduced and implemented as an alternative teaching and learning model. Various online learning platform like Cikgootube, EduWebTV, Digital Educational Learning Initiative Malaysia (DELIMa), Google Classroom and social media accounts were available for PdPR to take place. Additionally, online meeting applications such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Google Meet could be used. Students with no internet or suitable devices for online learning could still access PdPR via a daily television show.
Although PdPR was also offered offline and off-site, the availability and accessibility were rather limited. Online learning was the dominant teaching and learning method when the pandemic first hit, bringing the public to question whether the students were ready to take on this new learning environment. A survey conducted by the MoE aptly addressed this concern. It was found that 36.9% of 900,000 respondents did not own any electronic devices, less than half (46%) have a smartphone, only one tenth have a laptop, even less (6%) have a personal computer and only 5.8% own a tablet (The Star, 2020). To make things worse, there were students who had to share their device with other family members. In early 2021, among the local news headlines were limited internet access, lack and sharing of devices in households, and students having to trek for miles to get internet coverage (Bernama, 2021). Other than availability and accessibility to technology, unconducive learning environments also made it difficult for students to adopt home-based online learning (Hamidon 2021; Hawati & Jarud, 2020). Another concern regarding PdPR was the lack of social interaction during learning. Jan (2020), for instance, reported that their participants complained that they had no opportunity to develop social skills as student-teacher and student-student interactions during online learning were very limited.
It thus appeared that despite the expensive and numerous initiatives by the government in enforcing PdPR, there were still valid concerns with regard to availability and accessibility of technology, home environment, and social interaction that need to be looked into. These issues affect student engagement when learning online. Engagement, the primary construct investigated in this study, is vital to all modes of learning. Investigations into engagement in online learning are deemed timely as both the students and teachers were all novice participants who were coerced into this new environment. Demographic factors like gender (Shahzad et al., 2020) and family income (Hawati & Jarud, 2020) have also been known to influence online learning engagement.
The present study concentrates on investigating secondary school students’ perceptions of their online learning engagement and the external support received during the Movement Control Order (MCO) period in Malaysia during the pandemic. Perception is the focus of this study as it shapes not just the actual engagement, but also the opinion, understanding, judgement, and meaning of the online learning experience (Given, 2008). Although the MCO has ended, the discussion highlighted in this paper is still of pertinent importance because online classes are now used as the means for extra classes especially for students who will be sitting for public examinations. Apart from that, online platforms are also used for other educational purposes at school like motivational talks, interviews, and collaborative programmes. This situation shows that the implementation of online classes does not stop after schools reopened, hence understanding students’ engagement on online session can improve the deliverables of the organizers (teachers mostly). As stated by Muthuprasad et al. (2021), the duration of the pandemic and likelihood of reinfections are unknown. Therefore, all educational institutions must be ready to adapt the course structure and curriculum to accommodate the majority of the course content that are moving to e-learning platforms. In this paper, the discussion on students’ engagement is based on their emotional, cognitive and behavioural engagements (Fredricks et al., 2004), as well as external support. To what extent these engagements and support differ in relation to students’ school type was also examined. As such, this paper aims to compare the perceptions of secondary school students from different school types with regard to online learning engagement.