WORST ACADEMIC WRITING

IMD 252 – DIGITAL RESOURCE CENTER 2013

ACADEMIC REPORT TITLE:

THE BENEFITS AND DETRIMENTAL EFFECTS OF INTERNET USAGE IN

RESOURCE CENTER ON STUDENTS.

INTRODUCTION

What is Internet? Why Internet is important in our daily life? What is the relationship
between Internet and resource center? And what are the benefits and detrimental effects of
Internet usage on students? Here are the answers. Internet is defined as a computer system
that allows millions of computer users around the world to exchange information (Oxford,
2010). These exchanges of information can be made without meeting each other. They also
need no travel to seeking for information. Internet allows them to receive, exchange and
distribute information among each others. Nowadays, Internet is the very important medium
to communicate not only in people’s daily life, but also in education sector. Internet has been
used widely in resource center to make ease of access to information for students. This
make the Internet is very popular among students. According to Luambano and Nawe
(2004), there are 13.8 percent of students said that they were not using Internet while
another 86.3 percent of students are using the Internet. Hence, there are advantages and
disadvantages of Internet usage in resource center on students. The benefits of Internet
usage among students in resource center are improve the quality of education, changed the
learning environment, enabled the growth of distance learning and increase the educational
research while the detrimental effects of Internet usage in resource center on students are
unethical behavior, addicted to social network, get wrong information and exposed to
plagiarism. The purpose of writing this academic report is to tell students about the
advantages and disadvantages using Internet, so that they will not fully depends on the
Internet hundred percent.

BENEFIT 1

The first benefit of Internet usage among students in resource center is students
can improve their quality of education. As people knows, Internet provide many
information. Some may from authorize sources and some may be not. How this information
helps students to improve their quality of education? Students can use this information in
order to improve their knowledge. Students not only depend on one source only. Besides
that, if the students faced the difficulties during their studies or need further explanation
about particular subject, they can use the Internet to search for information. This can help
them to gain more new knowledge. Unlike few years before, information only comes from a

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very limited number of sources. Information comes from their suppliers or customers, from
within the organization, from services that a business might subscribe to, or from some
public source like the government or trade publications (Sharma and Maleyeff, 2003).

BENEFIT 2

The second benefit of Internet usage among students in resource center is students
can changed their learning environment. The Internet is animated with graphics and there
is always something to look at just one click away (Sharma and Maleyeff, 2003). Students
nowadays need something colorful and fun way of education, so, they can pay full attention
towards certain subjects. Through Internet, students can download lots of interesting notes
from Internet as they can use in their discussion. Hence, the students would not get boring
during the class. There are many types of interesting notes that available to be downloaded
in Internet such as PowerPoint slide, animated graphic with sound and videos. Students also
can exchange the notes with their friends. Besides that, there are many Websites in Internet
that let students to have fun tutorial and exercises. These Websites provide along with
answer and extra notes after the students done with the exercises. For examples, the
Websites that provides these excitements are Utusan Online, OhMyEnglish and others.
These Websites can help students to improve their knowledge and help them to get familiar
with the examination questions paper. Students also can search these Websites using
search engines like Mozilla, Safari and Internet Explorer to go through many Websites that
provides these services. However, students need to have good information and knowledge
on how to make a search so that they can get the correct result as what they wanted.

BENEFIT 3

The third benefit of Internet usage among students in resource center is it enables
the growth of distance learning among students. The Internet is a medium of
communication that makes it easier for students to interact with their instructors, peers, and
even industry experts (Volery and Lord, 2000). Internet allows students to have interaction
with others users in virtual to get the particular information that need by them. Students need
no travel to other places to seek for the information. Internet makes it possible for students to
send and receive the information on demand from colleagues that are at a distance. They
just need to have computer on desk and Internet connection, and the information just on
their fingertips. Students also can make video conference with their friend, teachers, experts
and other people if they need a prompt response of their problems in studies. Students can
do this with anyone although that person is out of place. For example, a working professional
student on a business trip has the ability to interact easily with his/her professor who may be

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home with a sick child (Sharma and Maleyeff, 2003). Besides that, this distance learning can
save student’s money and time because they just need to sit in front of computer and click.
There is no need for them to pay any bills as almost information in Internet are open sources
and can be download freely except from the certain Website that asked for payment for the
information given.

BENEFIT 4

The fourth benefit of Internet usage among students in resource center is they can
increase the educational research that is useful in their studies. Why Internet can
increase the educational research? Internet provides lots of free article and example of
thesis paper done by many researchers out there. Students can use these kinds of materials
as an evidence to support their research or as a guideline for their project. Students also can
make online survey by using pole to strengthen their research. This online survey can be
joined by student’s virtual friends through online social network like Facebook and Twitter,
through chat or instant messengers and others. Other than that, Internet also can make
easily access to all kinds of data and information possible. According to Adogbeji and
Akporhonor (2005), they states that out of the 422 students from Delta State University in
Abraka have been using the Internet for research and studies, 405 which are 96 percent
have considered the application of the Internet a useful tool that has made research and
studies easier for them, while 17 which are 4 percent of the students have not really gained
much from the impact of the Internet for research and studies. This statistic shows that those
who did not used Internet as a source for their research is because they are lack of
knowledge on how to use search engines and search terms. Students should explore
themselves or asked other people on how to surf the information in the Internet as it can help
them in their project. Through this way, students can get latest and up-to-date information for
their research program. Besides that, students also can get difference information from
many sources to sharpen their educational research for their studies.

DETRIMENTAL EFFECT 1

The first detrimental effect of Internet usage among students in resource center is
student will have an unethical behavior. The unethical behavior means students may be
exposed to the awful harmful Websites that can lead them to the negative effects. Internet
faces the risk of exposure to material that is pornographic, sexually explicit, offensive,
hateful, or violent, or that encourages activities of a dangerous or illegal nature (NetAlert,
2004). Internet allows users especially students to view and download any several of these
illegal and harmful materials without any age restrictions. Students are still young. Once they

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started watch these bad materials, they wanted to watch more and more, and to satisfy their
soul, they individually wanted to try it in real. For example, pornographic material including
the images involving the explicit sexual content. When students see this, they eagerly
wanted to do the exactly like what they see in the pictures. This can lead to the increasing of
social problems.


The second detrimental effect of Internet usage among students in resource center is
student will addict to online social network. Students love Internet because it let them to
communicate with other person through online social network. These online social networks
including Facebook, Twitter, Blogger and others. Yup, these medium can help students
make many friends. However, there is the bad side of these medium. Once they started
signed up and used these online social networks, they will get addicted. They may be will
spend most of their times in front of the computer and ignore other outsides activities. Well,
students should enjoy their lifetime as they should go out and socialized with others. But with
these medium, they will keep wasting their time chatting with unknown.


The third detrimental effect of Internet usage among students in resource center is
students will get wrong information from unauthorized websites. Internet carries
uncountable information for users. However, all these information are not fully authorized.
Information in Internet may be the real facts, but some of them are from the individual’s point
of view and does not based on any trusted sources. For an example, there is site called
Wikipedia. In this Websites, any users or individual including the students themselves, they
can sign up for that account and can edit and add any kind of information to the certain
topics. The information may be not accurate. As students, they should not take the
information easily. They should know how to differentiate the information from Internet, book
and any other sources to make sure the information in Internet is absolutely right and useful.


The fourth detrimental effect of Internet usage among students in resource center is
student will get exposed to plagiarism. As mentioned above, Internet serve millions
information and students used the information in their project. The Internet also makes it
easy to copy paragraphs of materials from various Web sites and put them together for a
report, or to modify someone else’s assignment (Sharma and Maleyeff, 2003). This also
called as plagiarism. Plagiarizing is claiming someone else’s words as your own word

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without proper credits, may be shameful, but not uncommon (Gormly, 2012). Students tend
to copying the information from Internet and pasting it to their assignment project.
Plagiarizing is easier than ever for students, who can just copy something from a website,
change the font and electronically paste it into their papers (Gormly, 2012). Students should
make a proper attributions and citation about the author. As a result, students would not
know what are they copying is all about. They did not even read and try to fully understand
the information stated. Yet, they will get nothing from the project done and it is meaningless.

SUGGESTIONS

There are logical suggestions to reduce those four detrimental effects of internet
usage among students. Firstly, to avoid students from being had an unethical behaviour is
teachers or staff of any experts in resource center should make restriction to access to the
harmful Websites. For example, the staff should make a policy for the students to disallow
them from visiting those harmful Websites. Besides that, the staff of the resource center
should use any kind of system that can filter the negative Websites from being visiting by
students. Secondly, to reduce the addiction to the online social network on students, the
responsible people should set the limit time for the students to access to the Internet.
Students may be allowed to accessing to the Internet for only one hour or less. These can
help students from being addicted to the networking. Thirdly, to avoid students from get the
wrong information from unofficial website is students themselves should refer to their
teachers or experts about the information that they get. They need to ask them whether the
information is a fact and can be used in their studies or it is not true. This is very important
for the students to get the real or fact information as the information will be used in their
studies. Lastly, to avoid students from plagiarized other’s work is the institution or the staff
of resource center should develop a workshop to students on how to acknowledge other’s
work or make a citation/bibliography. This workshop gives a new knowledge to the students
on how to acknowledge someone else’s work. This can avoid them from being charged as
plagiarism.

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CONCLUSION

In a conclusion, Internet has its own benefits and detrimental effect towards users
especially students. Nevertheless, this positive and negative impact can be control if the
students themselves know how to use it wisely. It is very important for the most of students
to get used with Internet for the sake of their study. They should ask people if they did not
know how to use it because this skill is very important for their future. However, there is no
need for the individual or students to explore deeply what are inside Internet because one
day, they will misuse that technology. Parents and teachers need to guide students during
accessing to the information, so, they can avoid students from visiting the illegal Websites.
Moreover, the experts in technology field also can help in controlling the accessing to
Internet. They can make any system for the resource centers that can restricting and
blocked student from access the wrong information. This can lead to the real knowledgeable
students that expert and know the important things only. Through this, students can be wiser
in handling the information that is available in the Internet.

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REFERENCES

Luambano, I., & Nawe, J. (2004). Internet use by students of the university of dar es
salaam. Library High Tech News, 21(10), 13-17. Retrieved from
http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/07419050410577550

Sharma, P & Maleyeff, J. (2003). Internet education : potential problems and
solutions. International Journal of Educational Management, 17(1), 19-25.
Retrived from doi:10.1108/09513540310456365

Gormly, K. B. (2012), Intrenet creates a rise in cut-and-paste plagiarism. Report Information,
Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezaccess.library.uitm.edu.my/
docview/917246846?accountid=42518

Adogbeji, O. B. & Akporhonor, B. A. (2005). The impact of ICT (Internet) on research and
studies: The experience of Delta State University Students in Abraka, Nigeria.
Library Hi Tech News, 22(10), 17-21. Retrieved from
http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/07419050510644347

Reilly, D. O. & Neill, C. O. (2008). An analysis of Irish primary school children’s internet
usage and the associated safety implications. International Journal of
Information and Communication Technology Education, 4(3). Retrieved from
http://www.igi-global.com

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