Review of Related Literature

Information Technology has influenced the way many of us live today. We use
the internet to conduct research, to look and apply for jobs, make airline reservations and
explore areas of interest. We use E-mails and internet to communicate instantaneously
with friends and business associates around the world. Computers are commonplace in
homes and the workplace (Sharpe, 2010)

It was observed recently that majority of academic and research institutions

provide Internet service to students, teachers, and researchers (Kaur, 2008).

The Internet has been widely used by the global populations of all genders and
ages (Daraha, 2013). Scherer 1997 as cited in Akhter (2013) suggested that proportion of
men using the internet is large as compared to the women. The only reason was females
often receive more family supervision than men in eastern cultures. As stated by
Kuhlemeier and Hemker (2007) the Internet skills of girls were hardly less developed
than those of boys.

An earlier study by Sharpe (2010) states that although the number of internet
users is growing exponentially each, year, most of the world’s population does not have
access to computers of the internet.

A continuation on the study by Sharpe (2010) we found out that the Digital
Divide between the populations who have access to the internet and information
technology tools and those who don’t is based on income, race, education, household
type, geographic location, but the gap between groups in narrowing. Over 80 percent of
college graduates use the internet as compared with 40 percent of high school completers
and 13 percent of high school dropouts. The number of internet users who are children
under nine years old and persons over fifty has more than tripled since 1997. Household
is inner cities are less likely to have computers and internet access than in those urban
and rural areas, but the differences are no more than 6 percent.

The Internet based technology has been changing rapidly over the last three
decades, and has significantly changed the online digital business (Bharadwaj, Sauwi,
Pavlo and Venkatraman, 2013), for example a significant proportion of transactions in
business to business and business to customer environment use Internet based technology
for communication, placing orders, financial transactions etc. An earlier work by
Englander et al. 2010 reveals that students are not immune to this change; they have
access to increased Internet based applications than a decade ago. In addition, increased
numbers of students gain access to the Internet each year and arguments have been made
by researchers about their academic performance being influenced both positively and
negatively with the increased use of the Internet. Several studies have focused on the
actual and the perceived role of the Internet has played on the student’s academic
performance. The Internet delivers multi opportunities for academia and has relatively
heightened the scope of the academic learning. The method of educating through text
book oriented learning in a class room has been partly replaced by the internet (Njoku,
2015).

Researchers and Academicians have been debating about the students’ academic
performance being influenced both positively and negatively with the increasing internet
usage (Englander et al. 2010). Present scenario shows that the number of students
accessing internet multiplies every year. Hence if the students access the internet for
academic purposes student’s academic performance will be enhanced (Brown, Ellore &
Niranjan, 2014). Also, the internet is an essential part of learning for almost every
college student in United States. They are benefited by internet specifically while
conducting research, seeking new ideas and communicating with their resource guides
and friends (Jones, Johnson-Yale, Perez & Schuler, 2007).

A non-profit organization- EDUCAUSE (located in Colorado, USA) conducted a

survey in 2011 gathering 3000 college undergraduate students from 1179 US colleges
and universities. The survey showed that students used the internet for personal use and
academic discourse while students also felt that cyber classrooms empowered students to
learn more compared to the conventional classroom methods (Dahlstrom, Boor,
Grunwald &Vockley, 2011). According to Mbah (2010) students from the University of
Buea are of the view that ICTs have a positive impact on their study habits, although
90% of male students support this view with regard to 73% of female students. Data
reveals that University students daily use ICTs to support their studies. As such study
habits are basically improving because of wide use of the internet, hypertext, and
multimedia resources.
 In the context of developing countries, Okello-Obura and Magara (2008)
investigated electronic information access and utilization at the East African School of
Library and Information Science, Makerere University, Uganda. Out of 250 targeted
students, 190 responded, giving a response rate of 76%. The study revealed that users
derived a lot of benefits from academic oriented internet usage (electronic resources)
gaining access to a wider range of information and enhanced academic performance as a
result of access to quality information.

According to Lee, I. and Lee, K. (2015) a new application for the internet is
developed, namely the Internet of Things (IoT), also called the Internet of Everything or
the Industrial Internet, is a new technology paradigm envisioned as a global network of
machines and devices capable of interacting with each other. The IoT is recognized as
one of the most important areas of future technology and is gaining vast attention from a
wide range of industries. A related study to the topic by Miorandi, Sicari, Pellergrinia
and Chlataca(2010) stated the term “Internet-of-Things” is used as an umbrella keyword
for covering various aspects related to the extension of the Internet and the Web into the
physical realm, by means of the widespread deployment of spatially distributed devices
with embedded identification, sensing and/or actuation capabilities. Internet-of-Things
envisions a future in which digital and physical entities can be linked, by means of
appropriate information and communication technologies, to enable a whole new class of
applications and service.