The Internet as a Learning Resource

Maneesha Sarda loves to read, especially literature, which, for her, is less of an academic journey and more of a discourse of life. She is a staunch believer in the philosophy of literature and strives to use its power to work towards a better version of herself.

The internet is a commitment to serve as an effective resource of information that has a magnanimous reach. It emerges as one of the greatest boons of technological advancement and plays a facilitating role as an educative tool. Essentially, it operates as an expansive pool of data that can be accessed by any user from every possible crevice of the globe. At the offset, in today’s cut-throat postmodern era, the internet plays a major role in meeting its competitiveness. The robust reachability makes it a swift and an easy target especially in the field of academia. It promisingly creates awareness about educational and job opportunities for aspiring students by contributing to their academic success. As a matter of fact, the internet is appealing not only to the youth of today, but also effective in various sectors such as housing, health, lifestyle, etc. that fuel quotidian life. Nevertheless, it is not only in the field of academia that the internet plays an indispensable role but it also assists in building a sense of awareness relating to the field of health, housing, lifestyle, etc.

Technological determinism that explores the relationship between technological enterprise with other aspects of human activity, dictates that technological advancement operates as a dominant factor that effects social change. As such, the crux of technological determinism in a technocratic society, becomes necessary to weigh how the internet, as a product of technology, serves as a source of learning; and in the process, effects human life. This impact can be weighed from various perspectives.

The internet as an epistemological tool:

The internet, as a research platform, is uniquely commendable for the archival information it contains about almost everything possibly knowable in the world. It is boundless in its reserves and the swiftness of accessibility proves to be exceptional in its potential to encourage a learner to be able to engage in a process of self- learning.

The possibility of learning independently proves to be empowering because this process is determined by self-sufficiency and not dependent on external factors such as the availability of funds or the need to be present at a particular physical environment to access information. Today, due the incredible tentacles of the internet, one can know what is happening in America’s NASA, sitting in the remotest village of India.

However, even though the internet is highly resourceful as an archival body, it lacks what books as a learning tool offers to the learner. This is so because not everything available in books can be available on the internet because the former is the longest surviving archival platform. Books do not face the challenge of any loss of data, whereas instances when certain webpages cannot be retrieved from the internet, are plenty. This epitomizes the risk of misinformation, especially with popular websites such as Wikipedia that enable anyone to change data, if they cite the source. In fact, this also questions the authenticity of information and even compromises the cyber security of the users and leads to cyber frauds.

Does the internet foster a social network or cause social alienation?

Another important factor that cannot be undermined while examining the internet as a source of learning, is the fact that it smoothly bridges the gap between the user and the data he/she is seeking. In this process, a virtual community of those with shared interests, is created across all national and international borders. For instance, internet platforms such as Google Classrooms and Zoom serve in providing an exclusive online learning experience. Herein, a learner from any possible corner of the world, can participate in the discussions that are undertaken in these platforms, irrespective of any domestic confinement to the classroom space. More so, such a multi-diverse interaction greatly helps in broadening one’s horizon and creates imagined possibilities of great intellectual discoveries, especially by subduing the challenges of social distancing and quarantining in the ongoing Covid-19 era. Nonetheless, the availability of such an opportunity that enables human society to build a virtual coterie becomes a predominant factor that also causes human alienation due to a serious lack of in-person interaction. This absence of social communication results to a loss of social skills, which further leads to societal isolation and in some cases deadly psychological distress in human personhood. Perhaps it can be questioned whether the rampage necessity and use of the internet by the modern society, in actuality, facilitates a societal unity or rather breaks the unity of the human community.

Is the internet biased or unbiased?

As a matter of fact, the internet is appealing not only to the youth of today, but also effective in various sectors such as housing, health, lifestyle, etc.

The internet serves as an open platform that is available to the public without any kind of a bias against sex, caste or religion. If a user has an internet source available, he/she can get hold of any information with a few clicks. Undoubtedly, it functions as a crucial research tool, which can be accessed by any user irrespective of his/her class status. This is true of many resourceful websites which are worthy of good academic content. For example- websites such as Academia, SparkNotes, Wikipedia and Shmoop are freely available to any user without any sort of a restriction. Yet, in Karl Marx’s terminology, the internet platform exacerbates the divide between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’, which are categorized by the middle class and the gain working-class people of a capitalist society, respectively. This is so because the internet proves to be heavily commercialized today, especially due to the fact that it restricts data based on the availability of subscriptions.

For instance, online journals like JSTOR and ResearchGate grant accessibility to data only if the user has paid a certain amount of fee. If only it were a matter of user’s choice, this argument would go weak, but what about those aspirants who are equally keen and qualified to deserve the erudite data but are denied access only because they do not have the means to acquire it? This fact also questions the extent to which the data available on the internet proves to be expensive/ inexpensive or free/limited in its character. If the internet itself cannot work without a mobile internet pack so as to say, is it even justified to state that it is available freely?

The efficacy of the internet as a tool of education is a mootable subject. Although technological, its impact is characteristically non-technological in the sense that it influences and is influenced by the quality of education, lifestyle and human life itself.

Certainly, the internet is a sustainable force that has not only outdone the limitations of geographical barriers but also expedited the process of obtaining and creating knowledge. The unforeseen liabilities that question the credibility of the internet, exist, but these drawbacks cannot undervalue its potential as a fantastic learning tool. Apparently, the problem of validating data or social alienation or commercialization of the education sector cannot be avoided, yet it can be discreetly handled with some caution. There is no doubt that the internet as a learning instrument is an asset to the field of education.

The internet, as a research platform, is uniquely commendable for the archival information it contains about almost everything possibly knowable in the world. It is boundless in its reserves and the swiftness of accessibility proves to be exceptional in its potential to encourage a learner to be able to engage in a process of self- learning.

Maneesha Sarda loves to read, especially literature, which, for her, is less of an academic journey and more of a  discourse of life. She is a staunch believer in the philosophy of literature and strives to use its power to work towards a better version of herself.