Internet access and use among business students of a private university of Bangladesh: a survey

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1 Annals of Library and Information Studies Vol. 58, March 2011, pp Internet access and use among business students of a private university of Bangladesh: a survey Sk. Mamun Mostofa Lecturer and Head (Acting), Department of Library and Information Science, Darul Ihsan University, Dhanmondi, Dhaka, 1205, Sk_mostofa@yahoo.com Examines the use of internet among business students in Darul Ihsan University, a pioneer private university of Bangladesh. A total of 162 questionnaires were distributed and 137 completed questionnaires were returned. Findings reveal a high percentage of internet use among students. More than 56 percent of the respondents use the internet for educational purposes. The access point for them is mostly the university. Google and Yahoo! search engines are found to be more widely used than other search engines. The major problem faced by the students in their use of the internet includes slow access speed. Recommends that the bandwidth should be increased to overcome the problem of slow connectivity of the university to internet and more computers with latest specifications and multimedia facilities should be provided. Introduction In the drive in higher education to promote the use of information and communications technologies (ICT), the role of the internet cannot be over emphasized. The internet provides scientists, lecturers and students, access to non-traditional sources of information. It is becoming more and more convenient to access the internet even though the history of the internet is not that old even in developed countries. The people of Bangladesh had to remain in the dark about it for a long time because of the non-availability of the service in this part of the globe. The main obstacle to start the service was to have data circuits to a suitable overseas location. However in this condition a few young talents started dialup service and made it commercially available for public use. In late 1995 the government of Bangladesh invited applications to subscribe the VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal) data circuits. On June 4, 1996 the VSAT base data circuit was commissioned for the first time in the country. Upon VSAT commissioning, internet connectivity was established and its services were made available to the public. After internet was launched, the June 1996 National polls results were made available to the citizens of the world using World Wide Web. This was the first ever usage event of its kind in Bangladesh. The effort was appreciated in many corners especially among the Bangladeshis living abroad. The year 1997 recorded a tremendous growth of internet. The total number of ISPs was more than a dozen and the clientele growth was ten times higher than that of the previous year. Afterward, a few new ISPs started their venture recording a proportionate growth in number of users. In 2006, Bangladesh got connected to the SEA-ME-WE 4 Submarine cable. After that, many ISPs found the opportunity to connect the submarine cable via Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (Now BTCL). This is the time when number of internet users increased by quite a big margin as bandwidth quality and price became affordable to general individuals. Over the years BTCL reduced the bandwidth price at regular intervals which has attracted more and more users towards the internet cloud. As of now, Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) has about one hundred and sixty six registered ISP license holders and there are approximately Four Hundred and Fifty (450) thousand users connected to them which are about 0.32 percent of the total population 1. Internet has changed the methods for accessing and using information and research activities. It has introduced new concepts of the teaching process and is recasting the roles played by the participants of the educational process. Therefore, it is important to

2 80 ANN. LIB. INF. STU., MARCH 2011 realize the perspectives of students about internet and this article aims at generating information on use of the internet by students of Darul Ihsan University, Dhanmondi, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Darul Ihsan University and Institute of Business Studies (IBS) Established in 1989, Darul Ihsan University (DIU) is the first private university in Bangladesh set up by Darul Ihsan Trust (DIT). It obtained formal approval from the Government of Bangladesh in 1993 under the Private University Act of The University, a brainchild of Late Professor Syed Ali Ashraf (who was also its founder Vice-Chancellor), is a unique academic establishment, the only one of its kind in the country, modern in outlook but faith-based in philosophy. The Institute of Business Studies (IBS) was established in 1995 under the Faculty of Human Sciences as a model center for basic business education and management. Education at the IBS has two fundamental aspects - technical and human. As far as the technical aspect is concerned the course curricula of IBS match well with those of all public and private universities of the country, as well as with some reputed universities of the UK and USA. The main objective of the Institute is to produce honest and sincere business managers and organizers to fill in the gap and vacuum created by a large body of dishonest people who stand as a hindrance to the desired economic development of the country. Hence, it also aims at producing business graduates having required knowledge, skill, and ability to cope with the challenging business environment and who are sensitive to religious and cultural values and will contribute towards management of the country s business affairs 2. Literature review Many studies have examined the information searching behavior of internet users. This study attempts to cover a number of works that go beyond discussions of the information searching behavior itself, and into its applications to closely related topics, such as patterns of information searching behaviors and uses of the internet. Singh 3 presented the results of a study on the use of internet by the librarians in Malaysia. The findings revealed that 90 percent of the respondents, most of whom were recent users of the internet, used it for work related purpose. A study conducted by Becker 4 on the internet use of public and private school teachers in the US indicated that 90 percent of the respondents had internet access. The majority of the teachers (59 percent) had internet access at home and a majority of the teachers (68 percent) used the internet to find information resources for preparing their lessons. Mahajan and Patil 5 carried out a study examining the purpose of internet use by research workers at Pune University. They found that researchers used internet primarily for conducting literature search. Another study conducted by Bavakutty and Salih 6 at Calicut University showed that students, research scholars and teachers used the internet primarily for the purpose of study, research and teaching. Ali 7 conducted a study on internet use at Aligarh Muslim University, India. The study showed that more than 50 percent of the respondents were satisfied regarding the amount of time allowed on the internet, but dissatisfied with the staff support and with the unavailability of reservations. The majority of the respondents were also unhappy with the number of nodes available. Chandran 8 studied the use of internet resources and services in S.V. University, Tirupathi, indicating that more than 56 percent of respondents used the internet to access information. They found that the majority of respondents used the internet, web and services. A survey of use of the internet facility at the Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, was conducted by Kaur 9. This survey indicated that all respondents used the internet to send and 82 percent for web browsing. More than 60 percent of the respondents used the internet for primary information, 38 percent for secondary and only 15 percent used it for consulting OPAC. Jagboro 10 guided a case study of internet usage in Nigerian Universities. The objective of this study was to evaluate the level of utilization of the internet for academic research at the Obafemi Awolowo University, lle-lfe, Nigeria. Questionnaires were administered to postgraduate students covering arts

3 MOSTOFA: INTERNET ACCESS & USE AMONG BUSINESS STUDENTS OF A PRIVATE UNIVERSITY OF BANGLADESH 81 and science-based programmes. Analysis of the responses showed that the respondents ranked the use of research materials on the internet fourth (17.3 percent). However, respondents who used the internet ranked research materials second (53.4 percent) to e- mail (69.9 percent). The study concluded that the use of the internet for academic research would significantly improve through the provision of more access points at departmental and faculty levels. Hanauer 11 surveyed a diverse community college to assess the use of the internet by students. The survey showed that although all of the students surveyed had free internet access through their community college, 97 percent of them reported having access. The survey showed that 83 percent of internet users had access to the internet at their home and 51 percent of them accessed the internet at college or the library. Eighty-one percent of the students reported to access the internet mostly for college work and 80 percent for /chat. Roknuzzaman 12 conducted a survey of internet access in a large public university in Bangladesh. The study used a questionnaire based survey method to investigate the infrastructural facilities for internet access and to know the patterns of internet use in all the 47 departments of 7 faculties, 5 institutes, computer centre, central library and administrative building of the university. The study revealed that nearly half of the responsible authorities of the various sectors are not satisfied with the existing facilities owing to several constraints. On the basis of the prevailing situation, he suggests future directions for better internet access in the common interest of the university community. Robinson 13 examined the internet use among African- American college students. The respondents were surveyed by using a 43-item questionnaire. The results of the study indicated that most of the African- American college students (76 percent) had used the internet for more than 3 years. The use of the internet for most African-American college students occurred at school or in the work place with 49 percent responses, or at home with 47 percent response, and that on average, 2 hours per day was spent on-line. A small percentage of the students spent 5-6 hours per day on the internet. Forty-three percent of the students used the internet primarily to learn and find school resources. Omotayo 14 provided a study on the use of internet among undergraduate students at the Obafemi Awolowo University, lie-lfe, Nigeria. A total of 1000 questionnaires were distributed using a stratified sampling method to select the respondents. Ten faculties were covered. A total of 664 questionnaires were returned and all were usable. The findings revealed a high percentage use of the internet. The access point for them was cyber cafes. The university library though linked to the internet is yet to provide access to students. Respondents pay for the access time through their pocket money for food, books and assistance from friends. Their use of the internet has not affected their use of the library. Nazim 15 conducted a study at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) to determine the extent to which internet users are aware and make use of the internet resources and services. The study examines the information searching behavior of internet users. A questionnaire and follow-up interviews with the postgraduate students, research scholars and academic staff were conducted to collect data, A total of 489 questionnaires were distributed to the selected sample of eight faculties; 405 valid samples were collected. The data were analyzed according to the background of internet users, internet information searching behavior, use of internet resources and services, quality of internet information, problems of the internet access and need for internet literacy. The study found that the majority of respondents had a five-year history of internet access. The academic staff spent more time on the internet than the students and research scholars. Although internet search engines were the preferred information searching tool, other methods such as databases, gateways and World Wide Web (WWW) were also used. Online journals and databases were the preferred information sources among the internet users. Respondents chose , WWW and search engines as important internet services. About 60 percent of respondents believed that the good quality of information on the internet made it a useful tool for education and research. Slow speed, lack of training and information overload was indicated as some of the factors affecting internet usage. Further, recommendations are made to improve the use of internet, including a well-planned internet literacy program and preparation of subject gateways.

4 82 ANN. LIB. INF. STU., MARCH 2011 Mahajan 16 carried out a study on internet use by researchers in Punjab University, Chandigarh, which analyzed how the convergence of information and communication technologies, as embodied by the internet, has transformed the present day society into a knowledge society. The respondents considered the internet the most valuable computer technology currently available to society. Internationally, studies on the information searching behavior of internet users have also been done. Kaur and Manhas 17 conduct a survey on the use of internet services and resources in the engineering colleges of Punjab and Haryana states of India. Data were collected by using a questionnaire and follow-up interviews with internet users, i.e. teachers and students of engineering colleges. The response rate was 80.8 percent. Results showed that all the respondents make frequent use of the internet because they have access either at college or at home. The survey revealed that the majority of the respondents, i.e. 65.6, access the internet from office or their workplace. More than 75 percent of the respondent's use the internet services mainly for educational and research purposes. Google and Yahoo search engines are found to be more widely used than other search engines. More than 70 percent of the respondents feel that the internet is useful, informative, easy to use, inexpensive and time saving. Objectives of the study 1. To study the use pattern of the internet by the business students; 2. To identify the different purposes that the internet is used for by the business students; 3. To find out the influence of the internet on the academic efficiency; 4. To assess users satisfaction with regard to internet resources and services; 5. To find out the problems they encounter; and 6. To suggest some measures to improve the use of internet-based services and resources. Methodology The study employed a structured questionnaire to collect data within the scope of the study. There were nearly one thousand undergraduate business students at Darul Ihsan University, Main Campus, Dhanmondi, Dhaka, and questionnaires were administered to a randomly chosen sample of 162 students out of which 137 completed questionnaires were returned. All the 137 filled-in questionnaires were usable. The respondents consisted of 93 male and 44 female undergraduate students. The respondents were all late adolescents and into early adulthood period with age range from 17 to 25 years. All respondents were asked to complete the questionnaire which consisted of 25 items. The questionnaire was divided into two sections. Section one addressed the sociodemographic characteristics while the second section focused on the use of internet facilities and associated factors. In order to analyze the influence of demographic characteristics such as gender and age on internet use, chi-square tests were carried out. Results and discussion Respondent profile Out of 137 respondents, 93 (67.9 percent) were male and 44 (32.1 percent) were female students. The data showed that 101 (73.7 percent) students had personal computers while 36 (26.3 percent) had no computer at home. There were 58 (42.3 percent) students from metropolitan cities, 54 (39.4 percent) students from district towns and 25 (18.2 percent) from villages. Table 1 show that a large proportion of respondents (52.5 percent) had less than one year of computer experience while 26.3 percent respondents had 1-3 years of computer experience. Only 29 (21.2 percent) respondents had been using computers for more than three years. Experience and frequency of internet use The respondents were asked to indicate their experience of using internet. The results indicate that the largest group of respondents had 1-2 years of internet experience, while 40 (29.2 percent) students had less than six months of experience of internet use. Only three students reported having more than four years of internet experience. The analysis clearly Table 1 Experience of using computer Less than one year years Over 3 years

5 MOSTOFA: INTERNET ACCESS & USE AMONG BUSINESS STUDENTS OF A PRIVATE UNIVERSITY OF BANGLADESH 83 indicates that the majority of the respondents had more than 1-2 years of experience in using the internet (Table 2). In order to assess the frequency of using internet services, the respondents were asked to indicates any one out of six categories of time lag. Thirty five percent of the respondents used internet daily, 32 percent used internet 2-3 times a week, 10.9 percent used it 2-3 times a month, 4.4 percent used once in a month and 10.2 percent occasionally. Others (10, 7.5 percent) used the internet rarely (Table 3). Access to internet The largest group of respondents (i.e percent) reported that they accessed the internet from the university, while 35.8 percent also accessed it from home. Another 18.2 percent also used other places such as cyber cafes, friend s place for internet access. It indicates that the majority of the respondents accessed the internet from the university and at home. Methods of learning internet skills Table 5 shows that the most popular method of acquiring the necessary internet skills is guidance from friends. Trial and error is the second most preferred method. More than 21 percent of the respondents used this method to learn the internet, followed by 13.1 percent guidance from the university. Sixteen respondents (11.7 percent) revealed that they acquired skills from external courses. Use of search engines Data presented in Table 6 reveals that Google and Yahoo! are the popular search engines. Google is the major search engine used by 85.4 percent of the respondents, followed by Yahoo (10.9 percent) and Lycos (1.5 percent), AltaVista (1.5 percent). This could be as a result of the fact that many respondents used the internet for education purposes. Search engines like Lycos, AltaVista and HotBot are not very popular among business students. Use of internet resources The preferences given by the respondents to various internet resources are as follows: 12.4 percent of the respondents used the internet for consulting technical reports, 5.1 percent for e-journals, 24.1 percent for e- Table 2 Experience of internet use Less than 6 months months-1 year years years More than four years Other Table 3 of internet use Daily times a week times a month Once in a month Occasionally Rarely Table 4 Most frequently used place of internet At university At home Friends Place At cyber café Other places Table 5 Methods of learning internet skills Trial and error method Guidance from friends Guidance from University External courses Table 6 Favourite search engines Google Lycos AltaVista HotBot Yahoo Other books,, 38.7 percent for conference proceedings, 0.7 percent for databases, 8.8 percent for theses and dissertations and 10.2 percent for other resources. A

6 84 ANN. LIB. INF. STU., MARCH 2011 large number of respondents used the internet for conference proceedings while the lowest number used it for engineering databases (see Table 7). Purpose of browsing internet services Table 8 exhibits that 56.2 percent of the respondents used the internet for educational purposes, 15.3 percent for research purposes, 10.2 percent for communication purposes, while 16.8 percent and 1.5 percent of the respondents indicated that they also used the internet for entertainment and other purposes. It suggests that the majority of the respondents used the internet mainly for educational purposes while the least number of respondents used the internet for entertainment purposes. Role of internet Most 82.5 percent of the students responded that internet can play a significant role in the field of education, whereas 10.9 percent of the respondent said that somewhat important and rest 6.6 percent of the students said that they were not sure. (Table 9) Importance of internet From Table 10, more than 70 percent of the students said that internet is very important in their life, followed by 19 percent students said that it is somewhat important, 8.8 percent students told internet is not very important in their life and rest 2.2 percent of the student's responses that internet is not important in their life. Influence on academic efficiency The information available on the internet has proved to be a great asset for many of the respondents. They have been able to keep themselves abreast with the latest information and improve their competence. Table 11 depicts the influence of the internet on the academic efficiency of the respondents. About twenty two percent believed that the near instant access and availability of the latest information online had increased dependency on the internet and equal proportion of respondents felt that the internet improved their communication with others so also that internet expedited their search process. About thirty four percent of the respondents thought that dependency on traditional documents has decreased. Table 7 Internet resources searched Satisfaction with internet services Conference proceedings Engineering databases E-books E- journals Technical reports Theses and dissertation Other Total Table 8 Purpose of browsing internet services Research Entertainment 23 Education Communication Others Table 9 Role of internet in the field of education Yes Somewhat important Not sure Table 10 Important of internet in life Not very important Somewhat important Very important Not important Table 11 Influence on academic efficiency Use of traditional documents has decreased Dependency on the internet has increased Expedited the search process Communication Any other 1.7 Table 12 shows that 29.2 percent of the respondents are fully satisfied with the internet services, whereas 27 percent said they are somewhat and 43.8 percent of

7 MOSTOFA: INTERNET ACCESS & USE AMONG BUSINESS STUDENTS OF A PRIVATE UNIVERSITY OF BANGLADESH 85 the respondents are not satisfied regarding the services provided by their university. Problems encountered while using internet It can be inferred from Table 13 that internet use is not free from problems. The problems encountered while using the internet mainly come from five factors: slow access speed, length of time required to download pages, difficulty in finding relevant information, cost associated with accessing internet, and privacy problems. More than 75.2 percent of the respondents stated the problem of slow internet access, which takes a lot of their slot time to download the relevant information, whereas 1.5 percent reported that they had difficulties to bear the cost associated with accessing internet, 9.5 percent of the respondents found it difficult to get the relevant information from the internet, 2.2 percent of the respondents were of the opinion that it took too long to download pages, and 9.5 percent of the respondents Table 12 Satisfaction with internet services Yes Somewhat No Table 13 Problems encountered while using internet Slow access speed Difficulty in finding relevant information It takes too long to download pages Cost associated with accessing internet Privacy problems Other Table 14 Use of personal computer, experience of using computer, internet use and gender χ 2 df p-value Use of personal computer Experience of using computer of internet use Important of internet in life faced problems with privacy on the internet Chi-square tests for gender Results of chi-square tests for gender revealed that there was no significant difference between male and female students on use of the personal computer (χ 2 =.831, df=3, p=.842). Chi-square tests for gender also revealed that, there was no significant difference between male and female students on experience of using computer (χ 2 =.719; df=3, p=.869.), frequency of internet use (χ 2 =2.859, df=5, p=.728) and importance of internet in life (χ 2 =4.568; df=4; p =.335). Chi-square tests for age groups Results of chi-square tests for age groups in Table 15 revealed that there was no significant difference among the age groups regarding the problems in using the internet (χ 2 =.2.473; df=8, p=.963). There was also no significant difference among the respondents for satisfaction of internet facilities (χ 2 =.8.225; df=4, p=.084). It also revealed that, there was no significant difference among age groups on experience of using internet (χ 2 = ; df=9, p=.175) and the frequency of internet use (χ 2 =6.233, df=10; p=.795). Chi-square tests for parent's monthly income Results of chi-square tests for parent's monthly income in Table 16, reveals that there was no significance difference for experience of using computer for the respondents (χ 2 =8.944; df=9; p=.442), experience of internet use (χ 2 =12.740; df=9; Table 15 Age groups and frequency of using internet χ 2 df p-value Problems while using the internet Satisfaction of internet facilities Experience of using internet of internet use Table 16 Parents monthly income and using internet χ 2 df p-value Experience of using computer for the respondents Experience of using internet of internet use Payment

8 86 ANN. LIB. INF. STU., MARCH 2011 p=.175) and frequency of internet use (χ 2 =24.949; df=15; p=.051), payment (χ 2 =8.081, df=9; p=.526). Conclusion The internet provides a wealth of information on any subject field. Students are using the internet increasingly and it occupies an important place among various information sources. It is widely used by the students of Darul Ihsan University for their educational and research purposes and it plays an active role in searching information. The information on the internet is not usually available in an organized way and the users are unable to get precise information from the internet. In order to make the internet more beneficial to the business students of Darul Ihsan University, more computers with latest specifications and multimedia should be installed so that users can utilize available internet services. More efficient technical staff should be appointed and made available in the internet section to offer expert advice. Bandwidth should be increased to overcome the problem of slow connectivity. Furthermore, orientation programs should be organized by the university at regular intervals so that more users can improve their proficiency in internet use for academic purposes. The staff of the computer lab section should feel duty bound to see that the users are able to obtain the right information. For this, they should organize and classify the information on website in such a way that the students are able to easily find the information they need for their studies and research purposes. References 1. Internet history of Bangladesh. com/?expert=hamidur_rashid (Accessed on 3 June 2010). 2. Darul Ihsan University Singh D, The use of internet among Malaysian librarians, Malaysian Journal of Library and Information Sciences, 3(2) (1998) Becker H J, Internet use by teachers, htm (Accessed on 26 June 2010) 5. Mahajan S G and Patil K, Internet: Its use in university libraries in India.In National convention on academic libraries in the Internet era (1999) organized by INFLIBNET, Ahmedabad, February Bavakutty M and Salih T K M, Internet services in the Calicut University. In National convention on academic libraries in the Internet, (1999) 37-44, organized by INFLIBNET, Ahmedabad, February Ali N P M, Internet and its use in Aligarh Muslim University: a survey. In Conference on Information Services in a Networked Environment in India, INFLIBNET, December 2000, p Chandran D, Use of internet resources and services in S.V. University, Tirupathi Environment. In Conference on Information Services in a Networked Environment in India, INFLIBNET, December 2000, p Kaur A, Internet facility at Guru Nanak Dev University: A survey. In XIX IASLIC seminar proceeding, Bhopal: IASLIC, (2000) Jagboro K, A study of internet usage in Nigerian Universities: A case study of Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria, First Monday, 8 (2) (2003). org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1033/95 4 (Accessed on 29 June 2010). 11. Hanauer D, Internet use among community college students: Implications in designing healthcare interventions, Journal of American College Health, 52(5) (2004) Roknuzzaman M, A survey of internet access in a large public university in Bangladesh, International Journal of Education and Development using Information and Communication Technology, 2(3) (2005) Robinson J W, Internet usage among African-American college students: An exploratory study, (2005). (Accessed on 30 June 2010). 14. Omotayo B O, A survey of internet access and usage among undergraduates in African university. The International Information and Library Review, 38 (2006) Nazim M, Information searching behaviour in the internet age: a users study of Aligarh Muslin University, The International Information and Library Review 40 (2008) Mahajan P, Internet use by researchers: A study of Punjab University Chandigarh. Library philosophy and practice, 8(2) (2006) Kaur A and Manhas R, Use of internet services and resources in the engineering colleges of Punjab and Haryana (India): A study, The International Information and Library Review 40 (2008)