Internet Usage and Students’ Academic Performance in Nigeria Tertiary Institutions

This paper examines the extent of usage of Internet among NigerianUniversity undergraduate and how this has affected their performance. Internet is indeed a powerful tool for academics – students and researchers. The Internet has been shown to influence the academic performance of students at the tertiary level. The influence of the Internet on academic performance as shown in available literature has shown that it could be positive and/or negative. A questionnaire was designed and administered to students in the Departments of Accountancy and Microbiology, University of Maiduguri, Nigeria. A total of 350 respondents returned the completed questionnaire. Three research questions were raised and were accordingly addressed. The paper was therefore of the opinion that if Internet Services are fully exploited, the performance of students in institutions of higher learning in Nigeria will improve. Keywords: internet, academic performance, microbiology, accountancy.

Internet plays a fundamental role in organizations and society. The basic fact justifies the information revolution that has been taking place across the globe in recent times. The term Internet according to Cawkell in Ogedebe (2004, p.152) is a large computer network formed out of some thousands of interconnected networks, and it supports a whole range of services such as electronic, file transfer protocol, database access and many others. It is therefore not surprising the success story behind the advent of Internet. That is why today, the Internet has linked thousands of nations and enterprises across the world. Hence, the world which appears physically large has been made to be too small by Internet and reference to it as “global village”.