Performance of teachers to use the Internet for scientific research: a pilot study with teachers of the degree in communication science from the UAT campus in Victoria

Abstract

The experience of the teachers towards the use of computer and internet work is gui­ded by their work, instead students use it in a playful way, which creates an imbalance in the teacher-student relationship in reference to the use of Internet for academic research. The objective of this study is to understand and describe how teachers of the degree in communication science from the Autonomous University of Tamaulipas, Victoria campus, use the Internet within their teaching and research and teach how to guide their students to re­search online. For this research two questions where brought up: 1) How and what university teachers use the Internet in? and 2) what In­ternet sites are recommended by teachers to their students for academic and scientific re­search?, which were answered by a descriptive and exploratory command pilot study, using a questionnaire of 12 questions to a sample of 35 teachers. The result is that 14.2% of teachers use the Internet for research and have more than three virtual academic sources iden­tified, 17.1% were limited to one virtual site, which indicates a lack of expertise in research work line. 60% of teachers to research online, they do not do thematic and site search dele­gating the task of investigating, and 17.1% said they use the Google search engine.