A Study on level of awareness of cybercrime among B.Ed. teacher trainees.

Abstract

In present scenario, information and communication technologies are universal and digitalization in all areas is expanding and the world of internet today has become a parallel form of life and living. The usage of Internet is one of the fastest-growing areas and the ICTs is a foundation for development in the creation, and use of network-based services. The introduction of ICTs into many aspects of everyday life has led to the development of the modern concept of the information society as it offers great opportunities. Online banking and shopping, the use of mobile data services and voice over Internet protocol telephony are just some examples of how far the integration of ICTs into our daily lives and education system. Online web representation is nowadays more important for businesses than printed publicity materials and Internet-based communication and phone services are growing faster than landline communications. But on the other side, the growth of the information society is accompanied by new and serious threats too, like different forms crime committed or facilitated via the Internet, may be termed as cybercrime.

The present study was carried out with the objective to investigate the awareness level of B.Ed. Teacher Trainees on cybercrime. The study was carried out on 100 B.Ed. Teacher Trainees. Cybercrime awareness scale constructed and validated by Rajasekar S. (2011) was administered to collect the data. The obtained data were analyzed by using mean, S.D. and t-test. Analysis of the results revealed no significant difference towards cybercrime awareness among B.Ed. teacher trainees in terms of their locality and streams opted. Majority of the B.Ed. teacher trainees fall under moderate or average level of cybercrime awareness (60%). None of the B.Ed. teacher trainees’ fall under excellent level of cybercrime awareness (0%), 18% of the B.Ed. teacher trainees exhibited below average level of cybercrime awareness and 16% of the B.Ed. teacher trainees shown low level of cybercrime awareness. A small percentage of B.Ed. teacher trainees (4%) and (2%) fell in the category of above average and high level of cybercrime awareness.