Use of Digital Technological Tools among Undergraduate English Language Learners in Pakistan

Technology has become an important source for enhancing the knowledge of the students. Apart from the non-academic purposes, the use of technology for the academic purposes also has greater impact on the process of learning specifically on tertiary education. Therefore, it has become essential for higher education institutions to focus on the available opportunities for integrating technology in the academic setting. The developing countries like Pakistan, however; are facing some major challenges in technology integration due to the unavailability of sufficient financial resources. Hence, this study explores the use of digital technological tools at undergraduate level in one of the public sector universities of Pakistan. The study also examines the impact of the medium of instruction and respective discipline of the tertiary level students on the use of technology. For this purpose, an online survey was conducted from 200 undergraduate students studying in four different disciplines in the university. The findings revealed that the majority of the students at the undergraduate level have accessibility to smartphones, laptops or desktop computers in the university but only a few students use these available technological tools for learning purposes. Smartphones were determined to be the most easily available technological tool while the students generally do not prefer carrying their laptops to the university. Besides this, the students also reported having limited technological knowledge and skills for the digital tools to be used for educational and learning purposes. However, a greater percentage of the students were willing to participate in training sessions for learning.


Technology in Educational Setting
Technology is now increasingly used in an educational environment and the technological practices and perceptions of students regarding technology in educational practices have been studied by many researchers. According to Bolluyt (2014), Laptops and mobile phones were observed to be the most commonly used digital devices by the students at tertiary education and the tablets, however, were found with the widespread accessibility to technology in different settings. Technology plays an important role in facilitating self-directed learning as well as learning while collaborating and connecting with the other learners. Incorporation of technology in classrooms is also contributing to bring improvement in learning, however; there is still a necessity of searching for the best ways following which the technology can be utilised for improving the educational outcomes and experiences of the students (Dahlstrem & Bichsel, 2014). The educational institutions are facing severe challenges in increasing the level of engagement of the students through the application of such technologies that do not only contribute to the fulfilment of educational needs but, at the same time, also enhance their educational outcomes. For making further decisions regarding the introduction of technology, higher authorities should provide the necessary support to the students as it is essential to consider the available technological practices and environment for learning purposes (Dahlstrem & Bichsel, 2014). Gosper, Malfroy and McKenzie (2013), Dahlstrom and Bichsel (2016), Swanson and Walker (2015) have also reported that the technologies are incorporated for both academic and non-academic purposes but in a different manner. For instance, e-mail in the USA is generally preferred for non-academic purposes while social media networking for academic purposes (Swanson & Walker, 2015). On the other hand, online libraries and learning management systems are considered suitable for academic purposes by the students in Australia (Gosper, Malfroy, & McKenzie, 2013). Besides this, Deng and Tavares (2015) identified that Moodle is considered to be the most preferable academic platform by the students in Hong Kong.
The perceptions of the students regarding information and communication technology are only determined in the studies conducted for the developed countries in the world. In comparison to the developing and least developed countries with 67 and 30 percent of youngsters between 15 to 24 years of age, 94% of the younger population in developed countries is using the internet (ITU, 2017). These researches have indicated that ICT infrastructure and facilities, in developing countries are limited. In Pakistan, only a few studies have focused on educational context and especially on the use of social networking sites. However, research on the use of technology in the educational context in Pakistan is still neglected (Rai, Hussain, & Zaheer, 2016). Pakistan is a developing country that occupies 142 nd position among total 166 economies according to the Global ICT index (Baloch, 2014). The digital practices in a country are not only influenced by socioeconomic factors and demographic factors such as gender, age, education, experience, skills and etc. (Geana & Greiner, 2011;Antonio & Tuffley, 2014).
The researches on ICT in developing countries have determined that digital devices are more easily accessible to men in comparison to women. Although significant efforts have been made to ensure equal accessibility of the digital technological tools but the gender gap still remains the same (Bogdan-Martin, 2016;Singh, 2017). The gender gap that was observed to be 11% in 2013 has increased to 12% in 2017 (ITU, 2017). In a study conducted by Pew Research Centre 2015, 13% gender gap in using digital tools was found. Furthermore, the gender inequality index by the World Economic Forum (2016) has shown a huge gender gap in accessibility to the digital technology in Pakistan ranking 143 out of a total of 144 countries.
Out of total 7000 languages spoken by the people all around the world, there are only a few digital content languages. Therefore, the preferences of the students regarding technology and their experiences have also been shaped by the content language of technology. Digital technological tools serve as a major issue in getting access to the internet for both inexperienced users as well as those willing to access i.e., new users (Bolluyt, 2014). English, being the most spoken language, is used as a content language in 53.6% of online services, applications and websites. On the other hand, although Urdu is one of the official languages of Pakistan but it is only used in 0.1% of applications or websites (W3Techs, 2017).
Only 10% of the total population in Pakistan has access to the internet while there are only a few people who are familiar with English as the second language. The internet, in Pakistan, is preferably used by the population aged between 20 to 24 years; those studying at the tertiary educational institutions. The two major types of schools in Pakistan, as revealed by the Ministry of Education, Training and Standards in Higher Education (2014) are public and private sector schools with two major streams of education as English-medium and Urdu-medium. Most of the private schools are generally English-medium schools that offer special classroom facilities, qualified teachers with high-quality educational material and digital tools such as digital libraries, projectors etc. Therefore, private schools are preferred by families with higher living standards (Khurshid, Shah, & Reid, 2016). Besides this, the students in Urdu medium schools generally have no access to the digital tools in schools, rather they rely on their personal access at home (Salam, Jianqiu, Pathan, & Lei, 2017). It is important to note that the majority of the schools in Pakistan are Urdu-medium schools.
The impact of using mobile phones on the digital division in the developed countries has been investigated by a number of researchers (Mascheroni & Olafsson, 2015). Puspitasari and Ishii (2016) have investigated that increased use of mobile technologies is expected to overcome the digital gap in developing countries as well. On the other hand, the researchers have also explored the benefits of using mobile technology for educational purposes, especially in making students familiar with the English language (Mueller, Wood, & Archer, 2011).
Within the past few years, a rapid increase in the popularity of smartphones has been observed in Pakistan with the usage to be reaching at least 40 million in 2016 (The Nation, 2016). Considering the previously conducted researches, this study determines the students' use of digital technological tools at undergraduate level in one of the public sector universities in Pakistan for educational purposes. As only a few researches in Pakistan have been carried out for the purpose of exploring the role of the digital technological tools in facilitating English language learning. The present study also explores if the students prefer using digital technological tools for learning English language and for determining and gaining insight into the stated problem, the data has been collected using the student's previous practices.

Research Question
The study focuses on the following research question: What are the digital technological tools used by the undergraduate students in English language classroom at a public sector university in Pakistan?

Research Objective
To explore the digital technological tools used by the undergraduate students in English language classroom at a public sector university in Pakistan.

Method
An online survey was conducted from 200 students belonging to four departments of a university operating in the public sector in Pakistan. All the information was provided to the students participating in the research through electronic means. The initial part of the survey comprised of questions to be answered with either a yes or no further ensuring that the respondents can ask questions for their confirmation and for receiving a full explanation of the study. During the consent process, it was ensured that the students understand the necessity of their agreement as essential for taking part in the study.
Hence, the initial part of the survey was based on seeking respondents' consent followed by the actual questions related to the study. The Digital Practices Survey was developed in consideration with the survey form constructed by Gosper et al. (2013) called Student Experiences and Expectations of Technology (SEET) survey. The SEET survey comprises of 127 questions that are further arranged in five different sections exploring the use of at least 20 technologies for educational and social purposes, the experience and future preferences of the students regarding the use of digital devices and the learning management systems.
In this way, the survey was conducted for the identification of technology that is being used for educational purposes, for communicating with the students and teachers and for determining the extent to which mobile phones can facilitate in improving the use of English language for educational purposes. The SEET online survey, by Gosper et al. (2013), involved both undergraduate and postgraduate students in three universities in Australia. The survey, however, did not consider the differences in education systems as well as the technological use in Pakistan and Australia; therefore, it was observed not to be completely applicable for the present study. Consequently, in consideration of the aim of the study, several additions and modifications were made. The changes included removing digital tools that are not commonly used in Pakistan and adding a separate section regarding students' use of digital technological tools in language learning classroom.
The survey for the study included a total of 120 questions comprising both close and open-ended, yes/no and multiple-choice questions divided into five different sections. Furthermore, a four-point Likert scale is used for measuring the frequency of the usage of technologies by the students. The Likert scale comprised of: never or seldom, sometimes within a month, sometimes within a week, once or twice a day. Besides this, the future preferences of the students have been determined using another three-point Likert scale comprising of Yes, No and Yes I would prefer taking part in training sessions. The overall internal consistency and reliability were measured calculating Cronbach's Alpha with 0.95 of its value indicating the reliability of the instrument.
Among the five sections, the first section comprised of the survey and consent information. The second section included the demographic and background information such as gender, age, language, education and semester they are enrolled in and their medium of education. Self-evaluation of the English language skills of the students and their access to the technological devices for their studies was also sought. The questions regarding the access and usage of digital technological tools were also included. The third part included questions for determining the degree to which technology has been used for academic purposes and specifically in classrooms of English language. For the determination of the ways of communication with other students and teachers, instant text messages, emails, phone calls and other social networking sites such as Facebook were given as the options.
Besides that, the fourth section included questions regarding the usage of smartphones for improving English language skills including vocabulary, speaking, listening, reading and writing. The value of Cronbach's Alpha for the third and fourth sections is 0.92 and 0.93 respectively. The last section comprised of five questions regarding the determination and willingness of the students for participating in learners' training in using the digital technological tools along with a question asking permission for using the provided information for publications.
The survey instrument was also tested on 10 students belonging to the English department of the same university.

Respondents
The respondents of the present study were the undergraduate students studying in four different disciplines at a public sector university. The target population selection criterion was the completion of at least 12 years of education.

Sampling Procedure and Size
The sample size of 200 students comprised of 50 percent male and 50 percent female with their ages ranging between 17-25 years. Out of which, 62% of the total sample population responded that Urdu is their first language followed by 25% Sindhi and 13% Punjabi. English was not determined to be the first language of any of the selected respondents. Besides this, the respondents were taken from the students studying in the first semester till fifth semester with four majors namely Management Sciences, Computer Sciences, Mechanical Engineering and English Linguistics. The students who participated in the research were also asked regarding the type of school they studied as the medium of education. The table below indicates the number of respondents who studied in public and private sector English and Urdu medium schools before university. The students were also asked regarding the number of years they have spent in studying English as a language. Around 36% of the students responded that they have spent 12 years or more, 47% had spent 5 to 11 years while the remaining 17% spent less than five years in studying the English language.

Findings
The findings of this research have been reported and arranged in consideration with three independent variables namely: gender, medium of education in schools and discipline they were associated within the university.

Results
The findings of the study are stated concerning the use of digital technological tools by the undergraduate students for learning English language at the public sector university in Pakistan.

Student's Accessibility to the Technological Tools
For the determination of the available and accessible technological tools, the students were asked to mention their preferences. After careful consideration of the technological tools in Pakistan, the major five tools that were included in the survey were smartphone, tablet, and availability of desktop computer at home or laptop, computers provided by the university in labs and libraries and bringing one's own laptop to the university. The access to the digital tools, as reported by the undergraduate students, is represented in Figure 1 below. The results indicated that the smartphone is the most easily accessible digital tool for the students.

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For practi smartphon smartphon the female purposes i students p Furthermo material co compariso twice a day

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The studen illustrated vocabulary in future.   Vol. 10, No. 4;2020 Practices Survey, the most accessible digital tool was determined to be smartphone used by at least 96% of the survey respondents. Following this, 85% of students reported having laptops or desktop computers at their home. Ahmed (2017) has also revealed that in the past few years, an increase from 30% to 50% is observed in the penetration rate of smartphones in Pakistan. Around 77% of the smartphones users in Pakistan are between 21 to 25 years of age, however; people from almost all age groups have started using smartphones. The findings also indicated higher accessibility and therefore, smartphones are presenting an opportunity to be used for academic purposes as well. Google has also reported Pakistan to be an emerging country with billions of users in the next few years (Ahmed, 2017).
The findings of the study also revealed that the students also prefer using smartphones as digital technological tools for their on-campus studies indicating restricted use of computers at universities. The reason was the absence of a suitable learning management system in educational institutions and differences in teaching methods. Teaching and methods of teaching have always remained among the neglected areas in Pakistan (Ammar et al., 2015). Hameed and Jan (2016), along with other researchers, have also stated that at the tertiary level of education in the country, the teachers rely more on lecture methods. Therefore, the students are only passive listeners with such teacher-centred teaching at the university level. Around 90% of the undergraduate students are dissatisfied with teaching and specifically about not using ICT equipment while teaching (Sahito et al., 2017). Less usage of digital tools in institutions is associated with the lack of development of ICT policies and training sessions for teachers in Pakistan (Khokar & Javaid, 2016). Similarly, the limited use of computers in university might also be as a result of the unavailability of ICT policies.
The previously conducted researches determined gender gap in different areas among students at the undergraduate level in Pakistan. The findings of the studies on other developing countries have also reported the same results (Antonio & Tuffley, 2014;Zakar, Zakar, Qureshi, & Fischer, 2014;Abu-Shanab & Al-Jamal, 2015;Chopra, 2017). The findings of the present study also reported a gender gap in accessibility and usage of digital tools among undergraduate students in Pakistan. In comparison to the female research respondents, male undergraduate students were determined to be using digital tools for learning English language skills more repeatedly. Despite the fact that Pakistan is expected to enter digital revolution, there still exists a major gap among the genders in using digital tools such as social networking sites (22% female and 78% male). Furthermore, the socio-economic factors also impact the accessibility and use of ICT equipment by the female population in developing countries. Some of these factors are determined to be cultural preferences, insufficient ICT infrastructure in the country and equal accessibility to the ICT and educational opportunities (Singh, 2017). Furthermore, considering ICT for the male population and other such factors is also contributing to the psychological barriers in women resulting in lowering their confidence level and participation in ICT-related activities.
The findings of the study revealed a major difference in accessibility and usage of technology among the students from English-medium and Urdu-medium schools. In comparison to the students with Urdu as their medium of instruction, undergraduate students with English-medium background have greater accessibility to the digital tools both at home and at their educational institutions. Therefore, it can further be stated that English-medium students are using digital tools for both educational and non-educational purposes. However, students with Urdu-medium background were observed to be more interested in playing computer games. The increased use of technology by the students is an indication of the availability and accessibility to the digital facilities at educational institutions.
Major differences in patterns of using digital tools were observed among the undergraduate students with different study groups. As compared to the selected three disciplines ME, MS and ENG, the students with CS major reported greater accessibility and use of digital practices and tools. The findings, however, did not reveal if the accessibility to the digital tools was a result of the needs of the students or their interest. Therefore, it is essential to carry out further investigation as the given strategic solutions of increasing the use of digital tools might not be appropriate for all of the selected disciplines in educational institutions.
Although, majority of the undergraduate students have ease of access to smartphones, however, there are only a few that are using a smartphone for improving their English language skills. With regards to future preferences, around 80% of students agreed to use smartphones for enhancing English learning skills such as reading and vocabulary. However, the students showed no or less interest in using smartphones for improving their speaking and listening skills.
The results of the study revealed that students from the selected university in Pakistan have accessibility to digital technological tools. In addition, a higher percentage of the students indicating the availability of smartphones further discovered that smartphones are accessible to most of the undergraduate students in the country. As the students have expressed their interest in using smartphones for enhancing their English language skills in future, it is essential to further explore the types of applications and technologies to be introduced at the tertiary level of education. Future studies must also focus on the benefits of the implementation of a suitable ICT policy at the tertiary education level as per the interests of the students in using digital technological tools for educational purposes.

Conclusion
This research regarding the undergraduate students' use of digital technological tools at undergraduate level has several implications in Pakistan as well as other developing countries in the world. The study has some specific implications for higher education institutions operating in the countries and their faculties. The increasing awareness and use of digital technological tools for educational purposes all throughout the world has also led educational institutions in developing countries to include digital equipment for improving the learning of their students. Furthermore, an increase in the use of digital technologies for enhancing the learning of the English language has also been observed. Royo-Vela and Hünermund (2016) also stated that incorporating technology in curriculum and highlighting it as a point of being different from other educational institutions has also become a part of institutional branding. Nevertheless, the adoption of digital tools at the institutional level is still challenging due to the limited resources. Besides the existing digital practices of the students, their future preferences regarding the usage of digital tools would result in maximising the outcomes at both individual and institutional level.
The findings of the study also revealed that the students at the undergraduate level in public sector university in Pakistan do not only have access to the digital technological tools but, at the same time, they are also willing to make the most of technology for learning the English language. As a proper learning management system is not available in Pakistan, smartphones that are available to the majority of the students could be used for the purpose of improving learning through enhanced communications between students and teachers.
The findings of the study also determined the areas that require further detailed examination and investigation.
As similar results could not be considered for the other private and public universities in Pakistan, Digital Practices Survey could be carried out at a wider scale. Furthermore, further research could also include the determination of the perspective of teachers regarding the most suitable technology for teaching at the undergraduate level and specifically in classrooms of English language. This would also facilitate in further planning and determination of the ways of dealing with major barriers to integrate technology at educational institutions.