Research Report: Learning To Become Internet Literate

By Sherry Teruya, G18, Spring 2003

Dr. Leon James, Instructor:

Instructions for this report are at:

Section 1: Introduction

The internet has an overabundance of information and without knowing the logical phases of identification, modeling and loyalty established by Dr. James, the feeling of technophobia could ensue. This report describes the three phases a person must comprehend to become an active learner and an expert at information and internet literacy.

Confusion and Intimidation

Michelle Alonzo “I had no idea what I was doing. Neither did most of the class.”

According to this statement, this is the beginning of phase 1. As with Michelle’s point of view, I too felt confused and overwhelmed after reading the instructions of what the class entailed. The baffled look upon the faces of my fellow classmates also conveyed to me that they were also a bit anxious by what we had in store for us.

In the beginning, since I had no idea of what I was doing as with most of the class, I did exactly what Dr. James said to do, which was to read then reread the instructions for the reports that were due. It was after doing so, that it all made sense and came together for me. In addition, learning how to upload a document via FTP was very nerve-racking at first, until I realized that I could overcome my frustrations by taking the time to read the tutorial about the steps that were needed in order to upload a document. It was from trial and error that I was able to upload my first report.

Relearning the internet

Katherine Gimeno “It was good to know that other people have experienced this much agitation from this class besides myself. It helps me to know that everyone experiences the same emotions. The work is manageable we just need to take on the task. I don’t think anyone could really fully understand how hard it is to overcome all the fears of learning to work with computers especially if your computer illiterate, until you actually do it for yourself. I think that everyone needs this kind of challenge and we all walk away better people for it.”

Katherine pointed out about the fear of learning to work with computers. Even though I did take ICS 101 with the lab, for the life of me I can not recall much of what I did learn. I’m assuming that if this could happen to me, then it could also happen to other students. In my opinion, being computer illiterate can also occur when we do not use the skills we have learned.

I believe what Katherine was referring to was that this a challenging class because of the fact that we have to use the internet as our main guide to help us. And that if we apply ourselves then we could accomplish the workload and make it much more manageable. She is also referring to Phase 2 and 3 or the modeling and loyalty phases in which the student must decide whether to be a passive or modeling student and have the capabilities to continue learning for the sake of learning or to better themselves.

With patience comes contentment

Ginger Andrews “Then after the frustration will come, pride, euphoria, success of mastering the body and seeing a product that you made, quite possibly, lasting forever.”

Ginger said it all with this sentence. She just described phase 1 and phase 3. Frustration goes hand in hand with phase 1, because it is the initial stage. Phase 3 is the success she mentioned, because with success comes a product of loyalty for the previous generations and generations thereafter.

After the frustration of the first project (home page and annotated bibliography report) that I had worked on was posted, I felt relieved, knowing I had succeeded in actually producing what I was supposed to. It is frustrating knowing how much work is needed for this writing intensive class, but it is well worth the effort because of what I am learning. I have never made a web article before, let alone had to think about what I was going to use as the search phrases.

Section 2: Self observation Data

The following forms were completed before, during and after the research for this report. Click on the link to see the forms and answers to the questions and how they were filled out.

Link for Forms

I was able to gather the data by using the internet and typing phrases relevant to what I was searching for. For example, for form 9, I had to evaluate my state of mind before I started my research on the topic of monogamy. Then as I was searching the internet for the information for and against this topic, I had to go back to the form to fill it out as I was doing the actual research.

Lastly, after I was through with the research and had posted it on discussion forum, I went back and completed the form. Each of these steps was taken in order to complete the forms.

The links below are instructions that were required for this research report, the forum discussions and for the annotated bibliography report.

Link for forum instructions

Link for bibliography instructions

In the beginning of the semester, filling out this form did not seem like a hassle, but after awhile I felt like I was repeating myself over and over again. I knew that in order to have a thorough report, filling out the form before, during and after my research was necessary. But in reality, I did wait a couple of times to complete the forms (during search sessions part) until I finished the whole research. I think that therefore the data should represent what I actually felt toward the research on the internet and not represent the frustration of filling out the form itself.

The form did have an influence on my search session because I had to stop in the middle of my research to fill out the form and I felt like I was answering the same questions on the form. In my opinion, the data on these forms are basic; therefore the data is pretty much about my state of mind while doing the research.

The data on the forms could be useful for system designers and search engine administrators because at times, it was difficult to find certain articles if the wrong search phrases were used. But I think it would only be useful if the forms are filled out accordingly. It should help by possibly giving them the information needed to improve their information services by narrowing the hits that are given for certain key phrases.

Below is a table composed from the forms that were compiled for the internet research sessions.

BEFORE SESSIONS Questions
1. Average time spent on searches	1 hour 20 minutes
5 & 6. How long I thought the search would take	Range: 1 hour to 2 hours
7. How important the task was for me	Average: 7.7 (with 1 not important to 10 extremely important)
8. How upset I would be if I found nothing	Average: 5.2 (with 1 not upset to 10 extremely upset)
9. How sure I felt that I would succeed in this task	Average: 9.4 (with 1 doubtful to 10 almost certain)
10. How likely I felt I would become good at this task	Average: 9.9 (with 1 being pretty doubtful to 10 almost certain)
11. How much luck I felt I had in searching in comparison to other types of tasks	Average: 8.5 (with 1 “I have bad luck” to 10 “I always find something useful”
12. How motivated I felt to keep on trying until I succeeded	Average: 7 (with 1 slightly motivated to 10 very highly motivated)
13. If I believed that computers and search engines made it easy for people to find what they were looking for	Average: 9.7 (with 1 “I strongly disagree” to 10 “I very much agree”
14. How likely I will find something specific on what I was searching for	Average: 8.4 (with 1 not likely to 10 very likely)
15. How much effort I expected the task to take	Average: 7.1 (with 1 not much effort to 10 a tremendous amount of effort)
DURING SESSIONS
Types of databases or search engines used	MSN: used 8 times YAHOO: used 1 time GOOGLE: used 2 times INTERNET EXPLORER 6.0: used 9 times NETSCAPE 7.0: used 1 time
END OF SESSIONS Questions
16. How irritated I felt from the task	Average: 3.5 (with 1 no irritation to 10 extremely irritated)
17. How anxious I felt from doing the task	Average: 2.3 (with 1 not anxious to 10 extremely anxious)
18. How frustrated I felt from the search session	Average: 3.6 (with 1 not frustrated to 10 extremely frustrated)
19. How much rage I felt from the search task	Average: 1.3 (with 1 no rage to 10 a lot of rage)
20. How much effort I believed this task required compared to other search tasks in my experience	Average: 5.7 (with 1 requiring less effort than others and 10 requiring more effort than others)
21. My evaluation of the relevance of what I found for the articles	Average: 9.8 (with 1 not relevant to 10 very relevant)
22. How supportive I was of the search engine or computer facility I used during the search session	Average: 9.3 (with 1 not supportive to 10 very supportive)
23. How easy it was to use the search engine or computer facility during the search session	Average: 4.2 (with 1 very easy to 10 very difficult)
24. How long this task took compared to other search tasks I’ve done	Average: 5.8 (with 1 much less than others to 10 much more than others)
25. The factor that was most important in getting the search results that I got	Luck: Not selected My search techniques: Selected 7 times The quality of the databases or search engines I used: Selected 8 times

Before the actual internet search, the form was filled out to access my affective self, such as the level of self esteem; phase 1 (question 9: how sure are you that you will succeed in this task? And question 10: how likely is it that you will become good at this type of task?), the level of motivation (question 12: how motivated are you to keep on trying today until you succeed?) and locus of control (question 11: how much luck do you have in searching in comparison to other types of tasks?) This all relates to how I perceive myself and my affective information behavior.

According to the datum from the forms, there seemed to be a similar pattern in the way I perceived the amount of time it would take to complete the search on the internet. There were a few times where I assumed that it would take more time than it did and there were also a couple times that the search did not take as long as I had anticipated. The importance of the task was positively correlated to the deadline date, in other words, the closer to the date that the posting was due, the more I perceived the task to be important.

The data for question 7, my affective behavior before the search session was initiated indicates that the score of the importance of the task was low when I procrastinated. This means I was not at the affective level of phase 1, which is “to postpone quitting and to eliminate procrastinating.” But my level of self esteem for question 9 was high and averaged 9.4 and also for question 10, which averaged 9.9. According to my explanations, my self esteem had nothing to do with whether I would procrastinate, but it had to do with whether or not I thought the topic was interesting.

At the end of the sessions, the averages for irritation, anxiousness, frustration and rage were 3.5, 2.3, 3.6 and 1.3 respectively. The explanations as to why I was mildly irritated from the search had to do with whether I was fatigued, irritated from having to fill out the redundant forms, or if it was difficult or not to find relevant articles for the search.

For the level of anxiousness and frustration, both also had to do with whether or not I had found relevant articles and patience in having to find the articles. And average for rage was low because my definition of rage is being overtly angry and hostile and therefore the score was considerably low.

I preferred using MSN.com as the major source for the search sessions. Although Google.com was also a great source for information, I favored MSN.com because of the fact that I was comfortable and familiar with it.

When comparing my data to that of Megan Datrice’s from G17, there are similarities when dealing with the weekly research report forms. We both had skipped filling them out accordingly, but the she had to remember her emotions or her self awareness, whereas I filled out the forms right after the search session. Another similarity is that the forms also induced frustration in the both of us. We both believed the forms were a pain to fill out and made the search sessions all the less interesting to complete.

Section 3: The Psychology of Information Literacy

Dr. Leon James article emphasizes the importance of technological information literacy and cyberspace learning communities. His logical theory defines an atmosphere where students can learn from previous generations.

The first of the phases of affective skills is phase 1. It is the stage called ‘Identifying’. Here the student is able to become information literate from generational identification by having the appropriate affective skills of not giving up when faced with intimidating challenges and identifies with his or her successful peers to help the student deal with technophobia. The student thus must have the cognitive skills of being attentive of what preceding generations have documented by performing the appropriate sensorimotor skills by doing the required searches for the forum discussions and annotated bibliography report via the internet.

Phase 2 or ‘modeling’ overlaps with phase 1 ‘identification’ in the sense that when students become literate they must learn to continue learning with the intention of becoming autonomous and these two concurrently determines the end result. Phase 2 also specifies interactive contributions where a “passive” student learns “modeling” and participates within this active learning approach.

Phase 3 or ‘loyalty’ occurs when a student is willing to become a leader and has the perseverance to support the pre-generational or current generational community. It is in phase 3 that the student finds the inspiration to be distinctive and creative and the student learns to integrate this life long learning experience into their own personal life, helping him or her to become experts for their efforts and determination.

This research report fits this logical approach because of the phases I had to go through in order to complete this report. For example, for the very first online research session (from form 1 question 7), my motivation level (identifying) was very high because I knew that in order to make it through this class, I had to not give up and had to perform the required activities online (showing loyalty). As I became acquainted with what the previous generations before me had accomplished, I too became a part of the learning community.

In 1990, The National Forum on Information Literacy was created as recommended by the American Library Association's Presidential Committee on Information Literacy. They define information literacy as an “essential” for our society with such enormous technological information. Because of this rapid growth of information, people need information literacy in all aspects of life; in schools, for personal use, for economic or business reasons.

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