IMPACT OF INTERNET ON STUDENTS ACADEMIC RESEARCH

IMPACT OF INTERNET ON STUDENTS ACADEMIC RESEARCH (A STUDY OF AKWA IBOM STATE POLYTECHNIC, IKOT OSURUA) 

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

• Background of the Study

The internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard “Internet Protocol Suite” (often called TCP/IP, although not all application  use TCP) to serve billions of users Worldwide. It is a network of networks that consist of millions of private, public, academic, business and government networks from local to global scope, that are linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless and optical networking technologies. The internet is a global network of computers linked together over large distance. It was created by the American Military as a means of communication and has been in existence since the 1950s up until the mid to late eighties commercial organization and educational institutions mainly used the internet. This was due to high costs. The rapid development of technology has seen improvement in communication links and reduction of cost. The implication of this is that the internet is now more widely available to more people. Since the internet is now available to a wide sector of the population in the western World, many educational establishments have used it as its educational potential. In this age of information and communication technology (ICT), the use of the internet has become the central part of the developed and developing societies around the world. Developing countries like Nigeria are not exempted from this trend. The craving for the internet stems from its central role in ICT with access to free online journals, magazines, and other information sources anytime and from anywhere for academic and research purposes (Kode and Kode, 2003). The internet carried an extensive range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents of the World Wide (WWW) and the infrastructure to support email. Most traditional communication media including telephone, music, film radio and television are reshaped or redefined by the internet, giving birth to new services such as voice internet protocol (VOLPL) and internet protocol television (IPTV).

It is used to indicate the students’ ability to select, research, and draw logical conclusion from findings. The quality of the research project is to a large extent dependent on the quality, remove, and recency of resources consulted and cited (Mbofung 2003). The use of the internet (if maximized) play a major role in helping students, researchers access to large number of materials from different parts of the globe. The internet is a valuable source of information for researchers looking for idea for academic activities with over 50 million web sites on the net chance are any information however obscure can be found. The only tools required to find this information would be some patience and a decent search engine. It also serves as a useful tool for lectures in helping to prepare lesson plans as there are a number of sites, especially in America, dedicated to providing educational material. It also serves as a forum to promote group discussion, which is time and distance independent. There are many forms this group discussion can take. These include video conferencing, where by the use of a small video camera and microphone members of the group can actually see and hear each other. Also group discussion can take the form of chat rooms where everyone comes together in a host area and communicates with each other via the keyboard.

In view of the above, this study seeks find out the impact of the impact of the internet on students’ research.