Indonesian Students’ Attitudes on Microsoft PowerPoint Usage in English Classroom

Nowadays, PowerPoint is becoming more common to be used in education throughout the world, including in an English classroom in Indonesia. One thing that must be considered before implementation of PowerPoint in English classroom in Indonesia is the students’ attitudes towards PowerPoint, since it may influence their learning. This research attempted to investigate Indonesian students’ attitudes towards the PowerPoint’s influence on their learning and their instructors’ performance in an English classroom in Indonesia. Also, the difference between male and female students in terms of their attitudes towards PowerPoint on those aspects was also investigated. The literature review of this research focused on attitudes and its influence of students’ learning and students’ attitudes towards PowerPoint usage in education. This research used the quantitative approach and utilized questionnaire to gather the data. The participants of this study were the students of Universitas Satya Negara Indonesia (USNI), a private university in Jakarta, Indonesia. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and the Mann-Whitney U test. The results of this research indicated that in general, participants showed positive attitudes towards PowerPoint’s influence on their learning and their instructors’ performance in an English classroom. Also, no significant difference between male and female students in terms of their attitudes towards PowerPoint’s influence on those aspects. Those results may encourage English teachers and lecturers in Indonesia to utilize PowerPoint in their classroom due to the positive attitudes of the students towards it.


Introduction
In recent years, the use of technology in education, particularly in the field of foreign language learning (including English), is becoming common (Conner and Wong, 2004). Most forms of technology used in education can be grouped under the category of Information Communication Technology (ICT) (Firmin and Genesi, 2013). ICT covers different types of technologies that can store, retrieve, and manipulate data, namely Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, email, and video conference (Riley, 2006). Implementation of ICT in foreign language learning has many benefits, including expanding the dimension of language learning and involving students in new activities, either individually or in groups (Dedja, 2015).
One of the forms of ICT that is commonly used in English language learning is Microsoft PowerPoint (hereafter, PowerPoint). Initially, PowerPoint was intended for business use (Nouri and Shahid, 2008). However, since the development of PowerPoint, it has been able to integrate graphics, sound, and animation; thus, it is suitable for educational use and has gained prominence as the tool for presenting information during lectures (Tabatabaei and Bandari, 2012). PowerPoint is becoming a popular tool in teaching in learning around the world, including Indonesia (Pramestiya, 2013).
There are some different opinions regarding the use of PowerPoint in English education. Alkash and Al-Dersi (2013) concluded from their research that some benefits may be gained by implementing PowerPoint in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms, including making the class easy and interactive, increasing students' motivation, and attracting their attention. On the other hand, Savoy, Savoy et al. (2009) reported that students retained 15% less information delivered during the session when PowerPoint is used than when traditional presentation methods are used. Other disadvantages of PowerPoint are that it may create some difficulty for students to understand information due to the condensed nature of it Tufte (2003).
An important aspect to be considered before implementing PowerPoint in any field of education (including English) is students' attitudes towards its use in the classroom. Attitudes may be defined as positive or negative evaluation of a social object Krech et al. (1962). Attitudes play a crucial role in the learning process. It is generally accepted that positive attitudes of students enhance their learning by increasing their motivation, while negative attitudes affect their learning negatively (Tabatabaei and Bandari, 2012). In short, if the students have positive attitudes towards PowerPoint, their learning motivation will be increased.
This research aimed to investigate Indonesian students' attitudes towards PowerPoint usage in English classroom. To be more specific, the aim was to determine Indonesian students' attitudes towards PowerPoint's influence on their learning in English classroom and their instructors' performance in English classroom. Additionally, the difference between male and female students regarding PowerPoint's influence on the abovementioned aspects in the English classroom was also investigated.

Attitudes and Its Influence on Students' Learning
Many definitions of 'attitude' that have been proposed by experts throughout the years. Krech et al. (1962) stated that attitude could be defined as the positive or negative evaluation of a social object. According to Eagly and Chaiken (1993), attitude can be defined as a psychological tendency expressed by evaluating an object positively and negatively. Finally, Crano and Prislin (2006) proposed that attitude entail 'evaluative judgments that integrate and summarize . . . cognitive/affective reactions' (p. 347). From these definitions, I derived a definition of attitude that will be used in this research: 'Positive or negative evaluation of USNI students regarding the influence of PowerPoint usage in the classroom'.
Prior research investigated the influence of students' attitudes towards various aspects in the classroom. Salome (2013), conducted a research to investigate the students' attitudes towards chemistry in secondary schools in Kenya. The data were obtained using questionnaire and from other documents. The results showed that the negative attitudes of students towards chemistry (which was caused by several factors) contributed negatively to the students' learning and their achievements in chemistry. Another research conducted by Liddell and Davidson (2004), investigated the relationship between students' attitudes to communication skills, their confidence to use those skills, and their academic achievements. The data were gathered using a questionnaire. The results showed that if the students had positive attitudes towards communication skills prior to enrolling in the classroom, they would have greater motivation and intention to absorb the material, which may reflect in their performance in the classroom.
In sum, it may be stated that based on previous research, attitudes may influence students' learning, particularly their motivation to learn, which may also affect their academic achievement.

Students Attitudes towards Powerpoint Usage in English Classroom
Various studies have been conducted to investigate students' attitudes towards PowerPoint usage in English classroom. Abdellatif (2015) conducted a research to explore Moroccan students' perception of using PowerPoint for enhancing their active participation in the EFL classroom. A survey was conducted to gather the data. The result showed that the majority of the participants showed positive perception towards PowerPoint usage in the EFL classroom. They stated that the use of PowerPoint in the classroom is a source of excitement and motivation for learning (Abdellatif, 2015). The research conducted by Benghalem (2015), also confirmed that students showed positive attitudes towards PowerPoint when it was used to help them to improve their English skills in the English classroom. Furthermore, Benghalem (2015), also mentioned several reasons why PowerPoint was so well received by the students. First, he pointed out that PowerPoint was already being used for quite some time by the teachers, so the students are used to it. Next, the tools provided by PowerPoint may help them improve their learning. Finally, the use of PowerPoint in the lessons may help create a better learning atmosphere, which makes the lessons far more interesting. Annetta et al. (2007), conducted a research to evaluate gender differences in the attitudes and perceptions towards PowerPoint of pre-service science teachers. The results showed a significant difference between male and female participants regarding their attitudes towards PowerPoint, where female participants had stronger positive attitudes than their male counterparts. Female participants found that integration of graphics (which can be done using PowerPoint) as an effective learning approach and were more likely to use it than the males. However, the results of a research conducted by Kahraman et al. (2011), showed no significant difference between male and female participants regarding their attitudes towards PowerPoint usage in classes. This inconsistency warrants further research.

Methodology
The method that was used to gather the data for this research was survey. The survey was conducted by spreading a questionnaire based on Yilmazel-Sahin (2007), questionnaire, which was modified by omitting several sections to match the need of this research. The participants were chosen among students of Universitas Satya Negara Indonesia (USNI), a private university in Jakarta, Indonesia. The participant were chosen using simple random sampling.
The data then analysed using both descriptive statistics and Mann-Whitney U test. Descriptive statistics was used to describe the research sample using mean and standard deviation, which were used to gain an understanding of the participants' attitudes towards PowerPoint's influence on their learning and their instructors' performance in the English classroom. Meanwhile, the Mann-Whitney U test was used to determine whether statistically significant differences existed between male and female students. This type of test was chosen due to its ability to determine differences between two groups (Nachar, 2008). This test works well particularly for research studies with a small number of participants and using ordinal scales (like Likert Scale) as the data measurement scale (Nachar, 2008), both of which matched the conditions of this research.

Indonesian Students' Attitudes towards Powerpoint's Influence on Their Learning in English Classroom
To answer this question, a descriptive analysis was conducted using the data gained from the questionnaire. Mean scores and distribution of the responses were used to determine the results. The results of the analysis were shown in Table 1. Valid N 100 The data in Table 1 show that, on average, the participants had positive attitudes towards PowerPoint's influence on their learning in the English classroom. The responses showed that the participants moderately agreed that PowerPoint had a positive influence on their learning in the English classroom (since all the mean scores were above 3, but below 4). 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.

Indonesian students' attitudes towards PowerPoint's influence on their instructors' performance in English classroom
To answer this question, a descriptive analysis was conducted using the data gained from the questionnaire. Mean scores and distribution of the responses were used to determine the results. The results of the analysis were shown in Table 2. The descriptive statistics results showed that the participants moderately agreed that PowerPoint helped their English instructors become better prepared and more organised (since the mean scores for those statements were above 3 but below 4), while they mostly agreed that PowerPoint helped increase the variation in the material delivered by their instructors (since the mean score was between 4 and 5). The results match the results from Yilmazel-Sahin (2007) and Nouri and Shahid (2005) research, which also showed that students had positive attitudes towards their instructors' performance with the use of PowerPoint in their classrooms.

Difference Between Male and Female Students' Attitudes towards Powerpoint's Influence on Their Learning in English Classroom
To determine the difference between male and female students' attitudes towards PowerPoint's influence on their learning in English classroom, Mann-Whitney U test was used. Since multiple tests were conducted in this research, Bonferroni correction was applied to avoid Type 1 error (Napierala, 2012). Thus, the critical p-value for this research was: 0.05/11 (number of tests conducted) = 0.0045. The results of the test were shown in Table 3. According to the Mann-Whitney U test results presented in Table 3, no statistically significant differences exist between male and female students in terms of their attitudes of towards PowerPoint's influence on their learning in the English classroom. The differences between the mean ranks of the responses from those groups were not significant. In addition, none of the p-values from the tests was below the critical p-value of this research (0.0028).

Difference between male and female students' attitudes towards PowerPoint's influence on their instructors' performance in English classroom
To determine the difference between male and female students' attitudes towards PowerPoint's influence on their learning in English classroom, Mann-Whitney U test was used. Since multiple tests were conducted in this research, Bonferroni correction was applied to avoid Type 1 error (Napierala, 2012). Thus, the critical p-value for this research was: 0.05/11 (number of tests conducted) = 0.0045. The results of the test were shown in Table 4. According to the data presented in Table 4, the results of the Mann-Whitney U tests show no statistically significant differences between the attitudes of male and female students towards PowerPoint's influence on their instructors' performance in the English classroom. The mean ranks for the statements were approximately the same. Additionally, none of the p-value from the tests was below the critical p-value of this research (0.0028).

Conclusion
The results of the analysis of the data show that in general, participants had positive attitudes towards PowerPoint's influence on their learning and their instructors' performance in the English classroom. Also, no significant difference between participants from different fields of study or in terms of gender regarding attitude towards PowerPoint's influence on their learning, and their instructors' performance in the English classroom, with the majority of each group showing positive attitudes towards it.

Recommendation
This research revealed new issues for further investigation. First, further research should be conducted to determine if the findings of this research would hold true for the utilisation of PowerPoint in the teaching of subjects other than English.
Second, it would be interesting to see whether students of different ages or levels of education (instead of gender) have different attitudes towards PowerPoint usage in either general education or the English classroom.