Student demographic information

The course the participant is undergoing, e.g. Distance mode or regular mode.

Study sample
A particular cohort of participants were selected who were pursuing various courses offered in distance mode where online component is mandatory and students who where doing their course in regular mode. The data is collected from the students who have online component mandatory for their study. The study sample is collected from selected students who have some prior knowledge of ICTs and computer literacy.

The study was conducted in Chennai on Distance Education Students of Symbiosis, GNIIT, IGNOU Students for whom Online Component is Mandatory. Majority of the course materials used by these students are online or web based. As the questionnaires were send to the mailboxes of the respondents we were able to get only 17 participants.

The samples were also selected from some of the Regular College students who were pursuing there higher studies in college for whom the necessity of using online resource is more for their study. This is also done by sending the questionnaires online. Of this we were able to get 18 participants of the expected 83.

The variables used in this study were gender, age and mode of study. Data from the spread sheet were analyzed using Microsoft excel. The Table I shows the participants breakdown of the sample. We had 35 respondents of the total sample of 100. Of the 35 respondent 17 students were students for whom the online study component is mandatory.