Purpose and Challenges Behind Use of E-Information Notice by University Students at the Shivaji University Kolhapur, India

Abstract

This survey examined the purposes regarding the use of e-information available at different   e-resources and the problems occur while accessing, searching and retrieving of the desired e-information from the bundle of e-resources specified by the postgraduate and research students of Shivaji University Kolhapur Maharashtra, India. University students constantly work on the theoretical/practical aspects in classroom and at laboratory to showcases desired learning and research outputs by consulting varied documentary and electronic sources of information. As of now students' trend lies with browsing of electronic contents to match appropriate e-information as global, anytime access and in variety of formats by surpassing the access challenges to accomplish their teaching and learning assignments. Descriptive method of research and questionnaire was applied as a data collection instrument for this study. There were 3761 university students enrolled and considered as a total population and out of this 351 university students are fixed randomly as a sampling ratio from the Krejcie-Morgan table. Accordingly, the organised and pre-tested online questionnaire was distributed to targeted sample of 351 university students from different post graduate departments of Shivaji University Kolhapur and it is found that a total of 254 university students were responded (72. 36%) to the survey. The analysis was carried out using MS excel software and presented with tables and graphs to highlights the major findings. It is observed that, out of total population under study, 90.16% university students use e-information for their academic/teaching/learning (activities) intentions, followed by the rest of the purposes. Further, 'difficulty in accessing the Internet' was the biggest challenge noted by 52.76% of surveyed students, and it hindered their use in accessing different electronic information services. While looking against the students' category wise intentions, the analysis reveals that out of thirteen defined purposes the quantum of use of e-information is higher in 7 purposes in case of Research Students, whereas it is higher in 6 purposes for Post-graduate categories of students.  Further, it has been found from the analysis that, intent for use of e-information is higher in male students (31.10%) as compared to female students (20.47%). Regarding faculty wise use of e-information for different purposes, the students from Humanities Faculty (20.86%) ratio is found to be higher than the rest faculties, and the students of age group 22 to 25(20.07%) response is high among the other age groups. In this direction, the study resulted in the use of e-information for various intentions and the challenges in accessing the e-information by the university students of Shivaji University Kolhapur.