Digital learning, smartphone usage, and digital culture in Indonesia education

The rapid development of information and technology has procreated a digital culture in Indonesian education. Digital culture refers to the behavior, manners, and engagement of the students to deal with the technology and the nexus of the Internet as part of their learning process and environments [1]. The students become friendlier to digital learning material or mobile devices that simultaneously change their learning [2–4]. The existence of digital culture can be sensed from the usage of digital learning resources and mobile devices in the learning process [5; 6]. Digital learning resources refer to any digital material that contains learning substances, such as audio and multimedia, learning games, graphic images, photos, video, animation, programmed learning modules, electronic textbooks, and journal articles [7]. Meanwhile, mobile devices refer to any kind of portable computing devices such as personal digital assistants, tablet computers, mobile phones, or smartphones [8; 9].

Structurally, two dimensions support the procreation of digital culture in Indonesian education: the big number of Internet users and the regulation provided by the government. The survey data conducted by Asosiasi Penyelenggara Jasa Internet Indonesia or the Indonesian Internet Service Provider showed that 143.26 million people in Indonesia are the active users of the Internet. Widiastuti (2018) mentioned that 26.48% of Internet users are using the Internet for more than 7 hours per day1. Widiastuti added that 16.68% of Internet users aged 13 to 18 years old. Meanwhile, Indonesia got 5th ranked with approximately 83 million smartphone users in the world. By considering the high number of Internet users, the Minister of Education and Culture of the Republic of Indonesia has issued the Regulation Number 65 of 2013a about the Standard Process of Primary and Secondary Education to manage the use of digital learning resources and technology in the learning activities. The government states, “the utilization of information and communication technology is intended to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of learning”. From this regulation, technology and mobile devices are constituted as a tool to support the learning activities and, consequently, it provides more space for technological usage and digital culture in education.

The students’ intensity in using a smartphone and digital learning resources is the

representation of the digital culture in education. It is because the students are usually carrying their smartphone at school and use it to work with their learning tasks [10]. Conceptually, smartphone usage has a close relationship with students’ literacy skills [11]. A smartphone can transform the students’ learning culture and experience during the learning process [12]. Huang, Chen, and Ho and Skolverket emphasized that reading digital form provides many innovative and exciting applications to read with new and improved usage contexts2 [13]. However, smartphone utilization can also give a paradoxical impact on the students. Bhih, Johnson, and Randles as well as Soik-keli, Karikoski, and Hammainen have pointed out the diversity of smartphone usage that reflects the diversity of user behavior and activities in the digital culture [14; 15]. Moreover, Lee, Chang, Lin, and Cheng, as well as Hsiao, Shu, and Huang’s, have mentioned a negative impact of smartphone usage in generating psychological traits such as locus of control, the anxiety of social interaction, and materialism [16; 17]. On the other hand, Stachl et al. have found that personality traits also affect smartphone usage [18]. Kolikant marked an ambivalent impact of using ICT for school purposes in which the students feel that ICT is fun but at the same time also serious and problematic [19]. This gap, from Kolikant’s perspective, can cause a disconnection between students’ learning aspirations and school policies.

Considering the dialectical relationship and the paradoxical impact between smartphone and students’ psychological and cultural dimensions, this article aims to depict the students’ digital fluency, particularly in the readiness in using digital learning resources and smartphone usage. Four questions have been proposed:

• 1)    How long the students use their smartphones in a day?

• 2)    What kind of technological activities do the students use to support their learning activities?

• 3)    Do the students believe that the smartphone will give a positive impact on their learning activities?