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Student's Perceptions on the Use of Search Engines as Information Retrieval Tools: Faculty of Communication and Information Sciences, University of Ilorin, Nigeria
Date of this Version
6-2019
Document Type
Article
Abstract
ABSTRACT This paper examined the Students’ Perceptions on the use of Search Engines as Information Retrieval Tools: Faculty of Communication and Information Sciences, University of Ilorin, Nigeria. A survey conducted using questionnaire as the instruments for data collection. Data was obtained from 120 undergraduate students of the faculty of the institution and were analyze for this study. The study revealed that majority of the faculty students purposely used search engines for research and assignment work. The results also showed that Google search engine is the most popularly used. It has been observed from this study that major reason of using search engines as information retrieval is to download relevant information materials from the Internet. It also revealed that majority of the students were Internet literate because they use the Internet search engines several times. It further revealed that the most used Internet search engines by the respondents are Google (92.5%), Yahoo (50%) and (40%) for Bing. Thus, this study concluded that it seems hard to evaluate which search engine is the best because it is really just a matter of preference. Tables and percentage were used for data presentation thereby enabling for easy discussion and interpretation of data. The results of this paper recommends that students should endeavor to use several search engines for a particular search query and compare the search results.