CHAPTER ONE

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Introduction

            Internet plays a fundamental role in many organizations and societies. The basic fact justifies the information revolution that has been taken place around the globe in recent times. The term internet, according to Cawkell in Ogedebe (2004, p.152) is a large computer networks formed out or some thousands of inter-connected networks, which supports a whole range of services such as electronic, file transfer protocol, database access and many others. It is therefore not surprising the success story behind the advent of internet. That is why today, the internet has linked thousands of nations and enterprises across the world. Hence, the world which appears physically large has been made to be too small by internet and reference to it as “global village”.

The emergence of business centers through the length and breadth of the country was the early sign that a sort of revolution was taking place; through he could not really identify what it was, that was ten to fifteen years age. Whereas, the average worker whether in the organized private sector, certain public services offices and some people when have had the opportunity of travelling to and probably did business outside the shores of Nigeria had started marveling at the workers of modern information and communication technology several years earlier.

The Nigerian environment was used to manual typewriters, business letters, duplicating machine, adding machine and analogue telephone. The introduction of digital telephone, telex, pagers, teleconference, e-mail, internet, website, file transfer protocol, and e-commerce signaled the arrival of information and communication technology, a big sigh of relief in communication and information networks.

According to Wikipedia, Academic performance refers to how students deals with their studies and how the cope with or accomplish different tasks given to them by their lectures. Therefore, Academic performance is the ability to study and remember facts and being able to communicate your knowledge verbally or down on paper.

The internet is a global network of computers linked together over large distances. It was created by the American military as means of communication and has been in existence since the 1950’s up until the mid to late eighties when commercial organizations 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 a lowering of costs. 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, the western world many educational establishments have seized on its educational potential.

The internet is a valuable source of information for students looking for ideas for projects and assignments. With over 50 million websites on the net, the chances of 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 lecturers in helping to prepare their lecture note for effective knowledge impacting to students.

It also serves as a forum to promote group discussions, which is time and distance independent. There are many forms to this group discussions can take. These include video conferencing, where by the use of small video camera and microphone members of the groups can actually see and hear each other. Also group discussions can take the form of chat rooms where everyone comes together in a host area and communicates with each other via the keyboard.

Although there may be many advantages to be gained from using the internet as an educational tool there are also many drawbacks. For the first time users, the internet can be a very unfriendly environment but with frequent use, users can get familiar, pretty quickly. The amount of information available on the net means that users tend to be side-tracked with a lot of unnecessary useless information. As the internet is not owned by anyone there are checks or censorship of information available. The upside to this is that information can be placed into the wrong hands. Also as there are check on the information on the net this may lead to in accuracies and misleading information being published.

The internet is heavily dependent on hard ware which can be expensive especially as the internet is constantly evolving technology; upgrades in hardware and software are required.

With the advent of the internet, education has definitely benefited in more ways than can be mentioned and although it will not take over the traditional methods of education it will continue to play a major part.

The emergency of the internet has created an extraordinary change in the reading culture. It has made its existence, fully or partially, in the reading behaviours of people. Presently, reading is no longer confined to the print reading. The scope of reading sources has changed drastically in the internet revolution to include web sites, web pages, e – books, e – journals, e – papers, e – mail, discussion boards, chat rooms, instant messaging, blogs wiks, and other multimedia documents. Now the potential realer can access and browse the online information from the whole web while using his/ her terminal at home.

Seeing the relevance of internet in academics performance of automobile students in education technical, the researchers find out its relevance in their academic performance.

Statement of Problems

            In many years back, internet use was not available in Nigeria more especially in the north western part of Nigeria. Yet, graduate has a very quantitative education with limited or no examination malpractices. However, with technological development of information age nowadays, most graduates of Nigeria higher institutions being it universities, polytechnics, colleges of education are not competent enough when it comes to defending the certificates they obtain. The students use the internet for examination malpractices by using internet – gadget such as mobile phone into the examination -hall. A student doing that could graduate and not be able to defend his/ her certificate. The government and other stake holders on the other hand concentrate solely on how to effect improvement in academic performance and improve the quality of acquired knowledge and skills of students.

An invaliding problem which has a negative effect on the society has since been ignited. Presentation of certificates for job and employment has gradually killed the Nigerian technology. All forms of misconducts are now introduced by many individuals the educations system in order to obtain certificates at the end of the educational progaramme.

Increasing reliance on the internet by students creates the problem of truancy, poor attendance to lectures and active participation in class. In view of the ever increasing incidences of examination malpractices, this study will be undertaken to explore online and offline reading and determine the differences between them while assessing the impact of internet use and online environment on academic performance of student of automobile in the department of education technical, examine two major variables in relation to academic excellence. The variable are; how internet use change student’s reading behaviour and academic performance. In addition student reading location, gender and programme of study were also looked into. This will provide basics for identifying the extent and dimension of the issues of internet use and academic performance.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study is:

1.        To find out the extent of the use of internet by Automobile students       of Education (Technical) department Kaduna Polytechnic.

2.        To find out how often Automobile students of department of             Education (Technical) Kaduna Polytechnic access the internet.

3.        To determine the effect of internet use on academic performance of        Automobile students of department of Education (Technical).

Significance of the Study

            This study can assist researchers, library Administrators, Guidance and Counseling Officers, lecturers and other management in the improvement of the quality of educations in Nigeria, by adopting concrete measures of controlling academic vises such as examination malpractices attitude among students at all level of Nigerian higher institutions. This however, will improve the intellectual resourcefulness of the students at all levels.

Research Question

The following question will be used to guide the study

1.        What is the extent and purpose of use of the internet by the             automobile students of department of educational (technical) Kaduna         polytechnic?

2.        How often do automobile students education technical department            Kaduna polytechnic access the internet?

3.        What is the impact of the use of internet to Automobile students of        departments of education (technical) Kaduna polytechnic?

Scope of the Study

            The research work is primarily concern with the effect of internet use on Academic performance of Automobile students of Department of Education technical Kaduna polytechnic; the study will focus only on B.TECH automobile students department of education (technical) in Kaduna polytechnic.

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