Difficulties in Accessing Networks in Remote Area Arts and Science Colleges in Kerala, Challenges and Issues Faced by Students and Teachers
- Dr. A. Vijayakumar
- 273-281
- Jun 30, 2025
- Education
Difficulties in Accessing Networks in Remote Area Arts and Science Colleges in Kerala, Challenges and Issues Faced by Students and Teachers
Dr. A. Vijayakumar
Librarian, St. Xavier’s University, Kolkata
DOI: https://doi.org/10.51584/IJRIAS.2025.10060016
Received: 11 June 2025; Accepted: 15 May 2025; Published: 30 June 2025
ABSTRACT
Arts and Science colleges in remote areas especially villages face several challenges in ensuring reliable network access for students, faculty, and staff. These difficulties stem from the complex nature of academic environments, the diverse needs of users, and the need to balance security and accessibility. The students and faculties are facing difficulties for acquiring information from internet for their research and academic purposes. This study focus these type for difficulties and solutions.
Keywords: College, Remote Area, Internet, challenges, Networks, Information Technology
INTRODUCTION
In the modern world, Information has become an essential for everyone and everyone needs information for some purpose or the other. The need for the information is higher especially in the field of higher education. Researchers and students are more than ever searching for information to enhance their studies while the lecturers and faculty members search for information to enable them impart up-to-date knowledge.
Networks:-A network consists of two or more computers that are linked in order to share resources (such as printers and CDs), exchange files, or allow electronic communications. The computers on a network may be linked through cables, telephone lines, radio waves, satellites, or infrared light beams.
Information use and awareness
Awareness of the changes in technology in recent years has dramatically altered how information is accessed, stored and disseminated. Awareness is knowledge about particular information and manifested through a particular behaviour. Awareness is paramount if students are to effectively and efficiently use electronic resources. Although, the value and use of e- resources have increased with time since users, especially students in higher institutions generally depends on skills of each user to locate discrete knowledge elements. The information literate user’s skill is being able to
recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use information resources effectively. The ability to use e-resources efficiently depends on basic computer skills, knowledge of what is available and how to use it, and ability to define a research problem.
E Learning;-E-learning refers to a variety of online education methods including the Internet-based education, digital learning, interactive learning, computer based assisted teaching. It basically consists of an online educational system that uses technology to teach students new information or skills. Due to a sharp decline in the cost, the use of web-based technologies for educational purposes has substantially grown. Today, many universities consider e-learning to be an essential component of their curriculum. More study has been done to thoroughly comprehend the drawbacks, benefits, and problems related to e-learning in higher education.
Problems faced by Networks:-Networks can face a wide range of problems, some as performance, security, and reliability, slow. These issues range from basic connectivity and speed issues to more complex challenges like security breaches and hardware failures. Understanding these problems and their potential causes is crucial for effective network management and troubleshooting in performance.
Relevance of the study
Now a day, with the advent of new technologies all library activities are greatly affected, so the study about the information awareness and use is very essential in academic libraries. A number of studies are conducted about the information awareness and use in various libraries in the world. But the study is not yet conducted about the difficulties for accessing network in remote area Arts and Science colleges in Kerala, challenges and issues faced by students and teachers and the view of the fact that these libraries are launched rural villages. The relevance of the study is to understand the awareness and use of information by the education students in the contemporary world. Based on these further steps can be initiated to solve the problems and also introduce new technologies in a speedy manner.
Objectives
1) To find out the purpose of visit.
2) To find out the level of awareness of information.
3) To assess the frequency of use of information sources.
4) To ascertain the level of satisfaction while accessing information sources.
5) To study the difficulties faced while accessing information.
Hypotheses
The study proceeds with the following hypotheses
1) The study started with the hypothesis that the collection of college library is adequate to meet the information needs of the students.
2) The second hypothesis of the study states that electronic resource available in the library is not adequate.
3) The third hypothesis of the study states that the users are not satisfied with the services provided by the library.
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
Review literature is an important aspect in any research through which one understanding the past trends in research output in any particular discipline. A review is a significant step to get clear pictures of what has been done and suggested already with regard to problem understanding. The study of the previous research findings given a hint to the budding area of fresh research.
The White man (2014) study examines the evolving American Bar Association standard 606 and its effects on the collections of academic libraries what the 21st century academic library will look like will depend to a large extent on how the AB standards respond to the changing realities of the physical academic library.
Tung (2013) reveals that today schools are threatened by declining enrolments and poor job prospects for graduates. The prominent reformers are exposing functions within the current system and recommending improvements but many of these proposals misunderstand academic libraries and their contribution of student and faculty success.
This article examines four possible curricular reforms and suggests ways that librarians can participate in a comprehensive effort to make legal education more useful.
Lenz (2013) indicates as state funding diminishes, public law schools moving towards a model of financial self-sufficiency strive to articulate their continuing public mission. The public school libraries also should take this opportunity to examine and refine their public mission by taking a broader view of their role in supporting their schools public mission, and collaborating with one another and with other state supported academic libraries to fulfil their public mission on a national basis.
Janneke and Ocholla (2012) was to investigate the information seeking behaviour of Academic students of a developing country specifically the paper made efforts of globally review the related literature on professionals information, library information and its relevance to their students, Information Communication Technologies in the profession, information needs of teacher training students, information seeking strategy of teacher training students.
Maatuk, A. M. et al. (2022). This research is focused on how students and instructors used and implemented e-learning technologies in a public institution during the COVID-19 outbreak. The study’s target audience was the general public, which also included academic staff and students from the University of Benghazi’s Information Technology (IT) department. The results were analysed using statistical methods and a descriptive-analytical strategy.
METHODOLOGY
The purpose of the study was to seek the views of students on their awareness and use of information. The study adopted a quantitative approach through the use of a survey design 120 students are selected by stratified random sampling method. The descriptive research methodology was adopted in this study. The following methods were adopted for the data collection.
a) Literature survey:-A literature survey is a study and review of relevant literature materials in relation to a topic. The purpose of a survey is to expertise the investigator and increases the knowledge in the area of expertise that they require. Literature is the mirror which reflects the past views and presents the future prospective.
b) Questionnaire:-Questionnaire method was used with the intent of collecting data relating to the information use pattern by the students in the library. Based on the review of literature, one sets of questionnaire have been designed to collect information for the library users.
Scope and Limitations
Remote area arts and science colleges plays a vital role in retrieving and usage of information. The main mission of libraries attached to this institution is to provide information service to academic community, to meet their academic requirement. The planning and designing of a library require as systematic study of the needs and requirements of users for how the library, its resources ad service meant.
Analysis and interpretation
The analysis of the study was to observe the information use and awareness of college students in Remote area Arts and Science colleges in Kerala .The investigator attempted to find whether the students use the library effectively. The investigator designed a questionnaire to obtain data necessary to examine the use of library by the students in Remote colleges. The questionnaire was given to 120 students in the college. These responses were analysed both category wise and gender wise and presented in tables. This chapter brings out the analysis of data providing a descriptive study of general characteristics of respondents and their use of the library in Remote arts and Science Colleges. It also analysis whether the college library meets the needs of the students and the difficulties faced by the students while seeking information. The investigator has also tried to find proper solutions to the problem.
Methodology
The methodology adopted to find out the information needs of the users of Arts and Science colleges library. The questionnaire method used as the tool for data collection. The method used by the investigator is the random sampling method.
Design of questionnaire
The questions include both factual and opinion questions. Most of the questions are close ended. The questionnaire consists of four sections.
- General information
- Information seeking behaviour
- Information needs about the college library
- Constraints faced by the users Opinion
The rating scale in the questionnaire used is a point scale of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and ‘satisfactory’ or ‘unsatisfactory’ is also used in some questions. More than three options were provided for a few questions to get appropriate answers.
Analysis of Data:-
Out of 120 questionnaires were distributed to the students and all of them were received resulting to 100% response rate.
Gender wise distribution
The gender wise analysis of the respondents are given in the table 4.1
Table 4.1 describes the gender-wise distribution of respondents. Among 120 students, 97 (80%) respondents are female and 23 (20%) respondents are male.
Age wise distribution
The respondents are grouped under, four age groups. The distribution is given in table 4.2.
Frequency of library visit
The table 4.3 describes the frequency of visit of users to the college library.
The analysis shows that 46% of students visit in the library daily students visit the library twice in a week is 26% students visit rarely is 28%.
Average time spent in the college library
The table 4.4 describes the category wise analysis of the average time spent in the college library.
It is clear from the table 4.4 that 27% of students use library half an hour and 43% of students use library for an hour to two hours and 30% of students use library in more than 2 hours.
Purpose of visit to the library
The table 4.5 describes the purpose of visit to the library is analysed to understand the use pattern of the students.
The study revealed that only 9% of students interested in research 17% students give priority to consult referring question papers 29% of student came to the library to referring journals and 32% of students come to the library for borrowing books. The percentage of students who come to the library for reading newspaper is 13%.
Service that expecting from the library
To analyse the services expecting by the students from the library. Table 4.6 shows the service that expecting from the library.
From the above table, it is clear that out of 120 respondents majority, 45 (37%) of the respondents are use library for Internet service, 32 (27%) of the respondents are use library for reference service, 31 (26%) of the respondents are use library for taking photocopies and only 12 (10%) of the respondents are use library for newspaper clipping.
Service provided by college library
To understand the students response relating to the services provided by the college library is explicit in the table 4.7.
From the above table, majority 109 (90.8%) of the respondents are satisfactory and a few respondents are unsatisfied 11 (9.2%).
Use of electronic sources
Response to the query relating to the usage of electronic resources available in the library, the outcomes is clear from the Table 4.9.
From the above table that 40% of students use Internet ,18% of students use E-journals, 16% of students use online database, 10% of them give preference to CD-ROM and 16% of them give preference to Audio – visual source.
Purpose of using Internet
For measuring the use of electronic information the respondent are asked to mark the priority of the use of internet, whether it is for Academic purpose, searching jobs, chatting, accessing online journals. The table below shows the details.
Table 4.10 shows that 60% of students depend on Internet for their academic purposes 21% of them are used searching jobs 9% of them using internet for chatting and 10% are using internet for Accessing online journals.
Purpose of retrieving information from electronic Resources.
To examine the students ‘purpose for retrieving information from electronic resources is shown in the Table 4.12.
The above table shows that 10% of respondents are retrieving information for project, 35% are using electronic resources for preparing study materials, 6% are to write article, 32% are to preparing seminars and 17% of them are used electronic resources for updating knowledge.
CONCLUSION
The aim of this study is to critically examine the awareness and usage of information resources among the students of Arts and Science Colleges in remote area. The library has a role to play in creating awareness among the students about the availability of information resources. This will encourage increased frequency in the use of those information resources and better research output. Students should be educated on the use of sources and need to always find out from the library available resources they can tap into for research and knowledge advancement.
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