Student Use of the Internet and Their Attitudes on Computer Ethics, with Regards to Internet Use By

Almost overnight, the nation’s college campuses got wired. Students used the Internet to view professors ’ Power Point presentations, consult faculty advisors through email, and stay in touch with friends back home via email and Messenger Services. Now, on-campus Internet use has experienced exponential growth. At the University of Southern California, for example, Internet use has quadrupled in just the past year (Armstrong, 2000). What exactly are student doing on the Internet? Is it mostly recreational activities or academic-based? To accommodate this vast increase in Internet usage, universities struggle to strike a balance that allows reasonable recreational use and more legitimate scholarly pursuits (Armstrong, 2000). The increased versatility that the Internet offers has increased its usage and the likelihood of its misuse (Banerjee et al., 1998). Misuse and methods that regulate such behavior, such as policies, bring about the relatively new and developing subject of computer ethics (Gotterbarn, 1992:p. 75). The purpose of this study was two fold. The first purpose was to determine the task based and non-task based us