By Brian Bellew

11/13/03

I. Introduction

II. Pre-and Post-Ratings

III. Notes

IV. Discussion and Analysis

Dr. James has been using an online forum for this class for 19 semesters. I am a part of generation 19 of the general curriculum. This semester we have been studying self-efficacy for the completion of our 6 required tasks. This is task 5, uploading report 2: My weekly research. The reader should expect a focus on cognitive and affective information behaviors as well as self efficacy, errors, and facing a due date. Based upon the data gathered through self witnessing we gain knowledge about our behaviors and also the skills to help interpret what they mean. In my opinion, my thoughts about this report have been much more positive than for report 1 and I expect them to remain positive for the final report as well. For me hardest part of doing work online is the computer knowledge and most of the problems in this area were resolved in previous reports.

Pre-and Post-Ratings are a way of self-observation in order for us to study information behaviors and computer systems. First, we can see changes in the scores as we adopt knew strategies, and overcome uncertainty. Secondly, we can look at written responses that provide explanations for why we selected the score we did.

Oct. 20^th

Another error that I found myself constantly repeating is typing website addresses wrong. This is somewhat of an important error because when people go to read the research message I wrote they cannot go to the link. This happened on a few occasions and the cause of the error may be that I read the address wrong, or forgot a word somewhere. I wondered also about a computer mistake because I swore I was very careful when typing the address and was feeling really frustrated when it didn’t work. I wanted to think that the error couldn’t have possibly been my fault. This has caused a cognitive change stemming from the frustration I felt when the link didn’t work. Now, I have found that I am even more careful when typing web addresses and I think that I have reduced my error rate in this area.

Oct. 27^th

I have made a routine of going to the library on Monday’s to do my weekly research and I believe for this reason that I haven’t fallen behind. I have formed a positive behavioral routine and I have increasing self-efficacy about my skills at this task. The approved topics we are researching are:

-How optimism affects problem solving

-Information literacy issues

-How self-confidence affects performance

-Gender discrimination in language use

-Speed limits and drivers

-Multitasking while driving

-How people cope with noise in their lives

-Understanding the difference between rational vs. mystical spirituality

-Errors-when, where, and what types

-La Femme Nikita Fan Movement

All of these topics I have done research for online, and because I am taking two classes from Dr. James, I will do a total of 26 research messages and 26 comment messages. Today, I look over the list and try to find a topic that I have only reported once on so that I can be sure and distribute my research evenly over all of the topics. La femme Nikita and Understanding the difference between rational vs. mystical spirituality are the two that me and it seems very few others ever report on, so I try to start there. The cognitive strategy I have been trying to employ is to look for topics that relate to the general topic first, and then looking to see if it fits in with any of the sub-topics. When this hasn’t worked, I have also looked very specifically for a sub-topic and also had success. I am not sure which strategy works the best as I have had positive results with each.

Nov. 3^rd

Today, I realize that I am getting much faster at searching and posting my responses. It took me approximately an hour and a half the first few times, but today I finished in about 45 min. I have been finding my two research message sites before I even log onto WebCT, and have been using either yahoo or google for my search engines. I always pull out my list of topics and subtopics and then search. It takes variable amounts of time depending on the topic.

Noise pollution has had much success as well as with optimism affecting performance. Once I have my two websites written down very carefully I log onto WebCT and enter my password and username. I find sometimes have committed a nonfatal error and entered the wrong password as I have different ones that I use for e-mail and for WebCT and sometimes by habit I type my e-mail address password. I look at some of the recent postings and see if anyone that I know from my class has any interesting postings that I can comment on. I would rather comment to a person who I can picture their face, rather than someone who I do not know.

Nov. 10^th

I am wondering if my searches have been limited because I am only using google and yahoo for my search engines. I am not sure what else to use and if another search engine might provide more scientific results. I have seen that most of the other students are using these same search engines based on what they are writing in their research messages. So, I figure it has worked so far so I will stick with it, but at the same time I wonder and make a mental note to look into it further in the future.

My routine is now set as I have even been working on the same computer in the lab at Hamilton Library for my recent postings. I enjoy doing research, as we have the freedom to roam the billions of website available to us. I feel a gradual increase in self-efficacy with computer literacy and also information literacy with computers. I feel these skills can only benefit me down the road. I have experienced several developmental stages throughout my weekly research but feel recently that I have reached a plateau. I have this task down to a level that I feel is successful and I feel a sense of accomplishment. My stages followed a path something like this, anxiety and feelings of non-confidence, overwhelmed by how many postings and unsure of my sites being appropriate, feelings of mastery and confidence as I repeat the task with few errors and success.

I have noticed today that some of the links at one site are useful to finding better information that was even closer related to the sub-topics. I have also made an error. I forgot to write down the web address of a good website and found the library computers don’t have a history bar that shows previously visited addresses. This meant backtracking search steps in order to find the informative web page again. It was not a big error and luckily I could find the page again with out too many mistakes.

A. Cognitive and Affective Behaviors

Our cognitive and affective behaviors along with sensory motor make up a threefold self relying on our thinking, feelings, and our acting out. In this section we analyze the characteristics of my information behaviors on two of the levels, feelings and emotions (affective behaviors) and thinking sequences and strategies (cognitive behaviors).

I really believe that my self monitoring of these behaviors has allowed me to look at my self from a more objective point of view. The most helpful behaviors I made for myself were to maintain a behavioral routine and a positive attitude towards our research on the web. I also stayed organized, when I worked on one topic I would write down the address of the site I found. I would do this in the directions I printed at the beginning of the semester this way next time I came to do research I could simply look at all the sub topics and see which ones I already had found websites for. One of the directions was that we had to distribute or research evenly over all the topics. My affective behaviors remained positive except for when I felt pressed for time. I think my cognitive behaviors were organized and logical and that they provided some good research and good overall results.

B. Errors

Error types can be broken down into 3 types: Fixable vs. unfixable, fatal vs. un-fatal, identifiable vs. unknown. Most of the errors I made were fixable, but I am sure many errors went unnoticed.

I think looking for my errors has helped me to realize them and not repeat them. I felt organized but I still was able to make some of the same errors everyday. I believe we underestimate the amount of errors we make in life, and when we see it on paper it helps us know that we make many errors everyday, so we should not be frustrated at them, they are a part of life and are rarely fatal. I think that I am patient and observing errors increases patience with others who make errors. This type of training may be good for leadership persons to allow them to see that errors are a big part of life and are made everyday by everyone. It increases empathy for others who we see make and error because we know we could make a similar error someday also.

C. Facing a Due Date

I felt pressure from a due date in two ways with this assignment. First, was on a weekly basis with trying to do all my postings for the week every Monday. I would go late at night to the library just to get them done on Monday and keep my established routine that I believed would help me to post on time every week. Secondly, I felt stress trying to finish reports for both of my classes from Dr. James. This is a lot of writing and I underestimate the amount of time that things will require. I think I have high self-efficacy for my writing skills and think I can do things faster than I really can.

I feel anxious when I know I have a due date and never like to miss it. The best strategy that I have used is to stick to a routine for web postings. I just had to stay strong and stick with what I planned to do. Optimism has played a big part in helping me accomplish the assigned tasks and I am learning how to change my thinking when I feel negative thoughts. I remember previous accomplishments when feeling pressure of a due date. My coping style for dealing with the stress I did encounter about facing a due date was to try and remember the reasons behind my hard work. Long term goals outweigh the distress of having to deal with time pressure constraints.

My weekly research on the web has been a weekly routine under constant revision. Since the beginning I have revised and improved my searching styles and reduced my errors. This report has helped me to identify the characteristics of my information behaviors by focusing of the cognitive and affective. The purpose of this report was to document empirically the characteristics of these information behaviors. I feel I have accomplished this and that the data is open to interpretation.

I have learned to be patient with errors as they happen often with normally no long term harm. I have also gained self confidence with my knowledge of computer systems as I have been forced to do new tasks on computers that a few months ago I doubted whether or not I could accomplish. I think that some of the pressures I faced with due dates and reports I was able to handle because of a gradual learned self efficacy with computer and information behavior skills.

To future generations I give the advice to start early because the computer knowledge needed to accomplish these tasks takes time to figure out. It is also important to read and follow the directions very closely as part of what we are graded on was how well we follow instructions. Finally, I would say to enjoy what you are studying because it is yourself. This work can be applied directly to your life because all the data is taken from yourself through self-witnessing methods like notes and pre-and post ratings.