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The findings revealed that students spend different times on the internet for academic purposes, have different motivations for spending specific time on the internet. Some students use the internet for academic reasons only when they have assignments, research projects and tests to prepare. Most of the students get swayed away from using the internet for academic purposes into entertainment including downloading music and movies, and also for social media.
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online advertisements which disturbs when they are working, while others indicated that they prefer MSN as compared to Google. Some of the participants also noted that they prefer using Mozilla Firefox when searching for information on the internet. This is how some of the participants expressed their opinions in this way:
“I use Google less and Yahoo more because I trust Microsoft more than Google” (Respondent B7).
“More often I normally use Google because in Yahoo there’s lot of advertisement there and useless things, so I’ll stick with Google” (Respondent C1).
“I normally prefer Firefox. When comparing Google and Firefox, if you put the same search query, they won’t outline the same responses, the order of webpages and/or links are not exactly the same” (Respondent E2).
“I use Google, and MSN when I’m at the computer labs” (Respondent D1).
“I use Google a lot, that’s where I start, but in my personal computer, I also use Bing” (Respondent D6).
Other participants specified that they used specific search engine for a particular purpose. They will mostly use MSN to read news trends in the public domain, and they will use Mozilla Firefox to connect to the learning management system like Blackboard.
Students indicate that it is easier to connect to Blackboard through Mozilla Firefox than Google or nay other search engine. Some of the participants conveyed their opinions in this manner:
“Google is the best, these other search engines like MSN, I use it when I’m reading trends, and Mozilla Firefox for Blackboard” (Respondent F7).
“I always use Google all the time. I only use Firefox when I want to access Blackboard and only when I’m at the computer lab” (Respondent E4).
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“Here at school, whenever I go to the internet I use Google and MSN, because they are default search engines, but when I’m using my mobile phone and the personal computer, its Google” (Respondent D3).
“The one I use frequently is Yahoo because if you have a problem with a particular aspect, you can just post your problem and you will find responses from different people, it works like a blog. I normally use MSN when I want to read about current affairs, however, I haven’t tried Bing. Well with Google, everyone is used to it, we use Google accounts. I use Firefox whenever I want to download something from YouTube” (Respondent E6).
Interestingly enough, most of the participants indicated that they only use Google to search information on the internet simply because they do not know other search engines which could be used to search for information on the internet. Students indicate that they were only exposed to Google when they start to use the internet, and they only learned about these other search engines at a later stage. This is how some of the participants expressed their concerns:
“Most of us have google accounts, so we normally use google search engine to search for anything in the internet” (Respondent F6).
“To be honest I only know google and I always use google to search for information” (Respondent A6).
“Often times I use Google and the rest I don’t know them” (Respondent C6).
“I’m a person who uses Google and these others ones I don’t know them”
(Respondent C2).
“Well, Google is famous, that’s the search engine we were introduced to when we started to know about the internet” (Respondent F6).
“I normally use Google every day, because these other ones like AltaVista I don’t know them” (Respondent C3).
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“To add on what A2 said about knowing those ones such as Yahoo and everything, the most common ones that I use is google and Google Scholar.
The other ones, because I do not have the knowledge about them, like I’ve never been exposed to them so I don’t how they work, maybe they will help me in future if someone can teach me about them, for now I only use google”
(Respondent A5).
Other participants indicated that they have decided not to use ‘simple search’ when searching for information on the internet. Students indicate that the information accessed through the use of simple google search or Wikipedia can be easily edited by anyone, hence the information cannot be trusted in the academic field. One participant expressed this view:
“When doing my academic work, I never use them because as I’ve explained before that anyone can just edit or put her opinion on Google, Yahoo or Being, that means that information is not well researched so its someone’s opinion, then for academic stuff I never use it” (Respondent A1).
The study has established that Google is the mostly used search engine when searching for information among students. Other search engines such Yahoo, MSN, Bing and Mozilla Firefox are rarely used because students are not familiar with them as compared to Google. Search engine such as Mozilla Firefox is mostly used when students want to connect to the learning management systems lie Blackboard. Yahoo and Bing and MSN are mostly used for reading news trends in the public domain.
Theme 3: Students’ acquaintance in using the internet for information search