Étudiants universitaires du Cameroun et les technologies de l’information et de la communication : usages, apprentissages et motivations

This study focuses on the uses of ICT by Cameroonian university students, in a context where the higher education is changing due to ICT. It therefore aims to better understand the uses of ICT that affect learning and academic motivation significantly among Cameroonian university students. To achieve this objective, four main areas of study are considered: -The uses of ICT by Cameroonian university students; -The perceptions of students on the use of ICT in their training -The impact of ICT on the learning of Cameroonian university students; -The impact of ICT on the academic motivation of university students in learning. The adopted typology of De Vries (2001), which is built on several variables related to learning with ICT (reading, doing exercises, dialoguing, playing, exploring, manipulating, observing, building and discussing), has facilitated the development of a description of the uses of ICTs by Cameroonian university students. To check whether ICT has a connection with the acquisition of knowledge aimed at by a course given to Cameroonian students, we used the taxonomy of Bloom (1956) revised by Lorin (2001). This taxonomy consists of active verbs that describe the operations of cognitive learning and specify learning activities related to ICT in terms of "ability to". Also, the results of Barrette (2005) on the effects of ICT on learning (improving academic achievement, cognitive development operations, improving the motivation and interest of students) have been very instrumental to better understand the influences of ICT on the learning of university students. The literature about the impact of ICT on academic motivation showed that the feelings of self-determination, competence and affiliation, influence students’ motivation. Thus, the theory of self-restraint of Deci and Ryan (1985, 1991, 2000) allows us to better understand the concept of motivation in this study. This research is based on a mixed methodology, with multiple sources of data collected (Savoie-Zajc and Karsenti (2000)): semi-directed interviews with individual students (n = 9), participating observations of students (n = 2), participating observation of groups of students (n = 3), questionnaire (n = 120). The thesis follows a format for articles, each article being closely linked with one of the objectives of the research. The results support the hypothesis that students use ICT on campus and in the cyber cafes for academic purposes. In other words, the research makes a description of Cameroonian university students’ uses of ICT, highlighting the types of the diverse uses encountered. The results also show that ICT are effective teaching tools to facilitate the understanding of complex situations of courses taken by students. This research led to the adaptation of the measurement scale EMITICE, a tool for measuring motivation during the integration of ICT in education, which made it possible to determine the motivation variation of students and to highlight a comparison of the changes in the type of students’ motivation.

Keyphrases: TIC, Perception, Motivation, ICT, ICT uses, Learning, Impact of ICT, Elearning, Pedagogical ICT