Usage of Online Resources by the Undergraduates Attached to the Faculty of Agriculture, Eastern University, Sri Lanka

Abstract

The online resources have emerged as one of the primary sources of information for teaching learning activity and research. Although the present era is mainly depending on online, all the students do not have adequate knowledge and skills necessary to exploit those resources. Hence it is essential for library professionals to analyses the online usage pattern of students before commencing awareness programmes. In this regard, the present study was designed to investigate the usage of online resources among the undergraduates of Faculty of Agriculture, Eastern University, Sri Lanka. Structured questionnaires were used to collect data among randomly selected 154 students. The study revealed that most of the students accesses Internet through smart phones for different educational purposes. Among them, purposes such as preparation for lecture and doing literature review are associated with academic year (p<0.05). Even though significant positive perception towards online resources (p<0.05) is observed, students are mostly unaware of both open access and university subscribed online resources, while they rely primarily on Google search. The factorial analysis revealed there are three latent constructs in the students’ perceptions such as “Usefulness of online resources”, “Awareness of online resources and the satisfaction of facilities” and “Challenges with online resources”. The study also revealed the barriers to access online resources namely, slow Internet connectivity, unavailability of time, lack of awareness and viruses and other malware pop-ups. It is recommended that well-planned information literacy programme should be introduced for all students regardless of their academic year in order to access information in an effective way.