The increasing need for use of internet for school work at SFU.

As a first year student at Simon Fraser University, I have not completely adjusted to everything post secondary completely so bear with me on this article. I noticed that much of University relies heavily on the internet to do school work. Before entering university I rarely required the use of internet to access information needed to do any assignment that does not require research. However when I entered university, this has all changed. Every homework and assignments I ever did at Simon Fraser University requires the internet access in order to know the assignment criteria. For example, for homework assignments that we need only page numbers and the question numbers from the textbook, the question numbers are only accessible online in adobe reader format. Of course they can be printed but they still require internet access at some point. Also in two courses I took at SFU, Chemistry 121 and Chemistry 122, the homework mark is based solely on internet homework. I am very sure that similar situations happen at other post secondary institutions as well.

I am not saying this is a negative thing. in fact, I find it a very efficient to get criteria for assignments online as they are readily accessible everywhere at anytime. Also it takes up less class time to know what we have to do for the assignment. However I find it strange that the requirement of using the internet just to do homework has increased so much transitioning from high school and university because not every that goes to post secondary institutions has internet access at home due to various circumstances. This creates obstacles for those students because they don’t have the advantage of getting their assignment criteria easily. What I am really concerned about with those is that with the reliance on the internet for homework might make them even more reliant on the internet in their everyday life, which is one of the thing that many people worries about. On a discussion on the discussion board of last.fm many people even admit they are indeed reliant on the internet.

In the end the question remains is that what will be the long term effect of reliance of internet for homework and studies at post secondary institutions.


Reference:
Have we become reliant on the internet? Last.fm Retrieved June 23-2009 from http://www.last.fm/group/People+who+love+spending+too+much+time+on+internet/forum/106564/_/460146