Understanding the Linkage between University Students' and Instructors Use of Online Resources and Their Academic Attainment in Social Studies

Abstract

Few decades ago, the Internet became a new home for academic research and a spot where teaching and learning materials could be found. A cursory look at previous studies on university instructors’ use of online resources shows intermittent influence students’ academic outcomes in Nigerian schools. Although, several efforts have been put in place to establish a cordial and steady relationship between university instructors’ use of online resources and the students’ academic attainment in Nigerian schools, it seems that there is paucity of studies on the linkage between university instructors’ use of online resources and students’ academic attainment in Social Studies. This research explored the relationship between Social Studies lecturers’ use of online resources and students’ performance in the course. This study adopted descriptive research using correlational design, and purposive sampling technique. 398 students at two Bachelor of Education degree-awarding institutions in Nigeria responded to the questionnaire. The data collected were analyzed using frequency counts, percentage, mean and standard deviation and Pearson Product Moment Correlation. The outcomes of this discourse indicated no significant relationship between Social Studies lecturers’ use of online resources and students’ performance in the course. Additionally, it was evident from the results that the extent to which Social Studies students’ use of online resources in the selected tertiary institutions in Nigeria was high. This paper, therefore, concludes that the use of online resources has no significant relationship with students’ performance in Social Studies. It was recommended that university instructors should grasp a new means in the use of online resources in the classroom in order to foster a good lecturer-students interaction that would eventually results in great academic attainment of students in the course.