A study of college students' uses of the internet for academic purposes. A study I conducted in 2012 and was presented at the 2nd Indonesia International Conference on Communication in Depok, Indonesia, December 2012.

1. THE MAGIC OF WIKIPEDIA
A Study of College Students’ Uses of the Internet for Academic Purposes
NADIA M. ANDAYANI, MA
Department of Communication
Universitas Indonesia
nadia.andayani@yahoo.com

2. Internet users are predominated by young people with up to
80% active users (Nielsen, 2011)
INDONESIA
The on-going Palapa Ring project targets to have 85% of the
country area covered by broadband internet access by the end
of 2014 (Ministry of Communication & Information, 2012)
#1
#2
#3
Lack of attention in improving human resources to adapt with
the technology, particularly for young people as they are
assumed as techno-savvy users.

3. presentation
agenda
1
2
3
background
theoretical framework
methodology
4
5
6
findings
summary
future work

4. 1 background
PREVIOUS ACADEMIC STUDIES
• New definition of digital divide
• Majority of research conducted in well developed countries
• Limited studies in Indonesia. The existing ones focus on
adults, education/government staff and librarians.

5. 2 theoretical framework
ACTIVE AUDIENCE: Audience actively constructs meaning
as they interact with text. Expert user use a range of
strategic cognitive processes to select, organize, connect,
and evaluate what they read in online environment (Coiro
& Dobler, 2007)
INTERNET LITERACY: Related to how users could get
benefits from their online activities. This study employs the
categorization from van Deursen & van Dijk (2009) to
illustrate the range of internet literacy, as follow: (1)
operational internet skills (2) formal internet skills (3)
information internet skills (4) strategic internet skills.

6. 3 methodology
CONSIDERATIONS FOR PARTICIPATION
• Four university students from 4 different universities in
Greater Jakarta area to illustrate different demographic &
lifestyles
• 2 Female, 2 Male
METHOD: IN-DEPTH INTERVIEWS

7. 3 methodology
Informant 1 - RA, female, 20 y/o, SES B
• Final year student in a private university. Shows moderate
understanding on technical skills and very low level of
content-related skills.
• Mostly influenced by friends and not encouraged by parents
to use the internet. Lecturers did support but did not guide
the activities.

8. 3 methodology
Informant 2 - SK, female, 18 y/o, SES A
• 2nd year student in a private university. Shows high level on
technical skills and low level of content-related skills.
• Mostly influenced by friends (and online social networks)
and also encouraged by parents to use the internet.
Lecturers did support but did not guide the activities.

9. 3 methodology
Informant 3 - DA, male, 21 y/o, SES A
• First year student in a private university. Shows high level of
understanding on technical skills and very low level of
content-related skills.
• Mostly influenced by friends and not encouraged by parents
to use the internet. Lecturers supported but did not guide
the activities.

10. 3 methodology
Informant 4 - CN, male, 20 y/o, SES B
• Second year student in a state university. Shows moderate
understanding on technical skills and also moderate level of
content-related skills.
• Mostly influenced by friends and not encouraged by parents
to use the internet. Lecturers did support but did not guide
the activities.

11. 4 findings
Internet Skills
• The findings show that all informants possess moderate to
advanced level of technical skills. However, if it is compared to
content-related skills, all informant demonstrate lower level of
capabilities, for instance: judging quality of the resources.
• One of the informants argued that all contents in the internet
must be truthful and thus, can be used as academic resources.
• Another informant stated that Wikipedia is the only ‘academic
resources he is aware of.
• All informants could not differentiate and not knowing what
academic resources mean.

12. 4 findings
Influence on Academic Lives
• All informants agree that internet has major contribution for
their academic lives, however, it is related on how it makes
them easier to complete tasks/assignments, but it is not
necessarily improving the quality of the assignments.
• All informants agree that internet made them easier to
cheat, particularly when they were on deadlines. The most
common way is copy and paste from Wikipedia/blogs.

13. 4 findings
Influencer
• All informants agree that peer-groups are the most
influential party in their online activities.
• Parents are also influential, particularly related to access to
the technology, as in providing PC/laptops and subscribed to
internet services at home
• Lecturers only contribute limited part to the online
behaviour

14. 5 summary
• Young people are indeed more familiar with the internet.
But, apparently, it does not mean that they could take
advantages from their online activities.
• In the context of education, supports from lecturers/adults
are needed to guide these students, particularly on
improving their content-related skills.
• In order to improve the skills, participation from education
institution are also needed.
• Language barrier is one of the issues that also needs
attention since most of the contents on the internet is in
English and other languages.

15. 6 future work
• Studies on internet literacy should be expanded into other
segments of society.
• Expand the criteria of informants to provide more insightful
findings as informants in this research are coming from similar
socio-economic status and geographic location.

16. Thank You

17. Q&A