IMPACT OF INTERNET USAGE ON THE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF STUDENTS IN NIGERIA

Background of the Study: The internet can be conceived as a rich, multi-layered complex ever-changing text for information dissemination and a medium for collaborative interaction between individuals and computers without regards for geographical limitation of space (Jagboro, 2003). The internet today is a worldwide entity whose nature cannot be easily or simply defined. To many, the internet is a large computer network linking together millions of smaller computers at numerous sites in various countries belonging to thousands of business, government, research, educational and other organisations. To the internet users, the internet is a global communityone with a very active life .The population of the internet is several million people whose computers are connected in a fashion permitting remote login, file sharing and transfer and other activities. The internet also connects too many other networks for exchange of messages such as email, online services etc.

Today, the internet has an impact on every facet of our life including business operation, education, communication, entertainment, social activity, shopping and so on. Many universities around the world are expanding their investment in information technology (IT) and specifically the internet and are actively promoting the internet use. From a student’s perspective, learning using online tools is multidimensional. It may entail a multitude of variables such as prior student knowledge of IT, experience in its usage, perceptions of IT usage, computer competencies and background demographics.

The awake magazine (1997, June 22) has it that internet began as “an experiment by the US department of defence in the 1960s to help scientist and researchers  from widely dispersed areas work together by sharing scarce and expensive computer and files. This goal required the creation of a set of connected networks that would act as a co-ordinated whole”. In his own view of the origin of the internet, Ibegwan (2002) opines that the internet is a huge computer network made up of many individual computers as servers’, which commenced in 1969 under a contract by the Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA).

Another importance of the internet is that it affords students (all over the world but more beneficial to those in developing countries) the opportunity to access a large pool of data which could help reduce the information gap resulting from the disadvantages of the educational opportunities (Komerik, 2005). The University library has a role to play through the provision of vast amount of information sources via the mediation of internet access. Resources that the library makes available must be integrated with one another and within the library environment and library services must support learning and research behaviours of its users.  

Furthermore, users want to access and use items from more than one content provider; also they ultimately interact with various user interfaces but even then, each service has a different user interface for discovery, with its unique set of “presentation services” that the user must learn and understand (Walker, 2006). Walker (2006) further stated that E-access opens up greater opportunities for people to find and get to an increasing corpus of knowledge. Search engines such as Google, Msn and Yahoo are now targeting the traditional library user; and libraries are under increasing pressure to develop and offer new paradigms for discovery that meet the changing expectations of end users.

With increasing impact of information and communication technologies on higher education, all those concerned with higher education are attempting to grasp how ICT could help in modernizing the process of teaching, learning and research. With the advent of the internet, the following dilemma arises in the educational system: Leaner is not dependent on teacher for interaction; and teachers can give lecturers virtually to unknown learners. So in this era, teachers and students can carry forward their work on the internet in ways that are similar to and tightly intertwined with the traditional ways that they learn, teach and study in libraries, classrooms, laboratories, seminars, conferences and so on. The internet can provide access to essentially unlimited resources of information not conventionally obtainable through other means.

The internet has broken down barriers of communication access from anywhere in the world. It is fast, reliable and does not have restrictions on content or format. It also has unlimited range of facilities which assist users to access almost infinite information on the net. It offers the opportunity for access to up-to-date research reports and knowledge globally. It has thus become an important component of electronic services in academic institutions. Hence the internet has become an invaluable tool for learning, teaching and research (including collaborative research).

Prior to the use of ICT for acquisition, processing and dissemination of information, university teaching, learning and research were restricted to student’s dominical institutions library or by extension those materials made available through inter-lending (Anunobi, 2006). However with globalisation through the internet, Carbo (2003) submitted that the world is shrinking resulting to immediacy of information. Consequently, the mode of acquiring and disseminating information for university education changed from physically available prints to e-materials with virtual reality (Anunobi, 2006). As a result of that, Akintunde (2002) as cited in Anunobi (2006) asserts that any attempt to have meaningful academic communication can be successful only with the use of ICT which presents information in real time and space. No wonder youngsters, especially students and researchers spend most of their time in the cybercafé. Where the latter is not available in the university community, they risk travelling a further distance to transact one business or another in the internet (Anunobi, 2006).