Attitudes of Academic Staff and Students Towards Internet Usage for Academic Purposes in Alzawia University, Libya

The modern society is in the transition process from the Information Age to the Interaction Age so the attitude of academics and students towards Internet use is continuously changing.

This study aims to investigate the attitudes of lecturers and students from Al-Zawiya University (AZU), Libya, towards the use of Internet technology for academic purposes and to formulate a set of recommendations for upgrading the quality and effectiveness of ICT implementation within the School of Engineering from AZU.

The action research approach is used to develop a novel framework for increasing the effectiveness of ICT implementation in AZU. The framework aims to improve the Internet skills of lecturers and students, increase the impact of the Internet on their academic efficiency, solve the problems they face while using the Internet, and increase their satisfaction with the Internet facilities provided by AZU. This new framework is built on the basis of different existing models and frameworks (a two-dimensional model for ICT integration in education, the ASSURE model, an framework for HE internationalisation, the ICube model for teaching and learning activities in modern Higher Education institutions).

The study includes an analysis of existing Internet use by academic staff and students which looks at various features of Internet usage, including purposes for using the Internet and users’ level of satisfaction with the Internet facilities provided by the university. The SPSS package is employed for qualitative analysis of sixty students’ answers to the questionnaires and shows that people’s skills, computing resources and infrastructure influence the efficacy of integrating computers into HE.

Semi-structured interviews are used to determine the attitudes of twelve academics towards use of the Internet in two departments – Department of English Language (DEL) and Department of Electrical Engineering (DEE). The qualitative analysis of academics’ responses identifies the cognitive, performance and affective components of their outlook towards use of the Internet for teaching and research. In addition, the relationship between their answers and the research hypotheses shows that a combination of individual and social factors affects users’ perspectives regarding Internet usage.

Finally, a set of recommendations for the enhancement of ICT implementation within the School of Engineering at Al-Zawiya University in Libya is formulated, aiming to enhance the quality of teaching, learning and research activities and the level of students’ satisfaction with the technology-enhanced approach to learning. The findings of this thesis might be of interest to managers, academics and other people involved in the design and development of strategies for ICT implementation in Libyan universities and similar developing countries.