Internet Usage by the Post Graduate Arts students of Sourashtra College, Madurai: An Awareness Study

Abstract

Studing the internet usage pattern of the students in an educational institution will help the administrators to take certain strategic decisions on issues like number of computers, availability of internet connection, the speed of the internet connection, bandwidth required, anti-virus and fire-wall softwares to be used, the kind of user orientation or education programmes need to be conducted, the variety of e-resources to be made available etc. The present study aims at finding out the internet usage pattern of Postgraduate students of Sourashtra College, Madurai. The study is restricted to 69 randomly selected PG students of various arts departments of the college. Data was collected through questionnaire. The study reveals that: 32 % (23) of the respondents have been using Internet since 1-2 years. 25 (36%) respondents use internet 2-3 times a week. ’Trial and Error method’’ and ‘Guidance from Friends’ are the two internet learning sources. 65% of the respondents are aware of Airtel and Reliance as the Internet Service Providers (ISPs).’College’ and ‘Browsing centres’ are the most preferred locations for the respondents to access Internet. ‘Education’ and ‘Entertainment’ purposes alone constitute 67% of the reasons for internet use. 85% of the respondents use web addresses and search engines to get required information. ’Google’ is used by 92% (66) of the respondents. The most referred e-resources are ‘E-Books’ and ‘E-Dictionaries’ (57.33%). ‘Electricity failure’ is the major problem faced by 31 (48%) respondents in accessing Internet. 83% of the respondents opined that internet facilities made available in the library are good.