Abstract
Stakeholders in education believe that Information and Communication Technology (ICTs) can improve students’ academic performance. Therefore, educational institutions are investing large sums of money in acquiring technology to be used by lecturers and students to improve the teaching process and, subsequently, students’ academic performance. Research shows that several studies have been conducted on how ICTs can enhance the teaching and learning process and the benefits and disadvantages of using this technology, but not much research has been conducted on the influence of ICTs on academic performance. This study was timely as tertiary institutions were ‘forced’ to conduct all teaching and learning remotely. In such a case, ICTs play a pivotal role in students’ academic performance. A structured questionnaire using a quantitative approach was used to collect the data. Purposeful sampling was used to select respondents as they had to be students registered in the period 2020-2021 for a qualification at a tertiary institution. This study was underpinned by the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) framework. This framework was deemed most suitable as it was used to investigate students’ acceptance of ICTs for teaching and learning in tertiary institutions within South Africa and, subsequently, the influence of ICTs on their academic performance. The collected data was analysed using Google forms. The results show that ICTs do improve student academic performance.