Research Report:  Learning To Become Internet Literate

By:  Donna Nazarchyk, G17, Fall 2002

Dr. James Leon, Instructor:  http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/leon.html

Section #1:  First Review

Review #1:  This is a review of Ryan Mitsui's Learning the internet report.

    Ryan says that learning the internet is a "hands on process" that takes time and totally depends on the person's ability to learn.  He breaks the learning process into three stages, which he calls Confusion, Resistance, and the spider man phase.  Here is a link to his page:  http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/459f96/rmitsui/409/reports/report2.html

    His first phase called "confusion", is for novices.  Ryan says that this phase does not only pertain to learning the internet but, it relates to anything new that you learn.  He compares this to riding a bike.  His second phase is called resistance. I find it interesting that he calls the second phase "resistance".  He says that this phase is when people start to give up because they don't want to learn the new and unfamiliar material.  The third phase is the spider man phase.  In this phase you are good at the particular skill.  You can do without having to "bumble around, wasting time and getting frustrated".

    I agree with the most part of Ryan's report, except for the second phase.  I don't think this phase should be called the "resistance" phase.  I think in this phase you are not trying to resist the newly learned material but, rather in this phase you are trying to use the new material and apply it.  I think that's how this phase should be described.  After all why would anyone try to push away new material that you need.  Instead I think this phase should be renamed "testing the water".

    I think that Ryan's three phases (except for the second phase) go accordingly with how someone learns new materials.  First you have no idea at what you are doing (the confusion stage), then you try and apply the newly learned material (the second phase), and the last phase shows how you get to be comfortable with the information and become confident with your newly acquired skills (the spider man phase).  My hypothesis can be demonstrated through babies learning how to walk. They don't go directly from birth to walking.  In the middle they learn how to crawl.

Section #1: Second Review

        My next review is on Kai's research report.  She has four phases that she goes through.  Her first is Fear, the second phase is Frustration, the third phase is Information overload and the fourth phase is Getting motivated/possible addiction.  Here is a link to her page:  http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/409af96/hansjurg/reports/Report2a.html

    Her first phase is Fear.  This fear encompasses learning the new material.  Learning how to use the internet and experiencing how to use the internet.  She says "most fears are overcome during the learning process".    The second phase, called "Frustration"  is seen by me as a subsection of the first phase.  It's a phase where you have some-what learned the material and now you have to juggle it around to try and use it.  In this phase Kai says "the machine just doesn't seem to understand".

    In the third phase "Information Overload", you have learned the information, but now you get even more frustrated because you've learned everything and you just can't seem to get it all straight.  You have overloaded yourself with this new information.  You get scared and anxious and sometimes can forget how to do everything that you just learned. 

    The fourth phase is called "Getting motivated/possible addiction".  In this phase Kai tries to warn you about the dangers of the internet.  Kai talks about how, when you get to be an expert, you find out how much you can get out of the internet.  Kai  talks about how "addiction to computers is a reality". 

    I agree with all of Kai's phases except for the fact that the fear phase and the frustration phase should be included together.  I think the phases that she goes through are accurate enough and I like the way she goes beyond the steps and talks about the downfalls of becoming an expert.  The pattern that she goes through is pretty accurate.  It has a step by step description of how one would learn how to use the internet.

    When going into my second review of previous generations, I was thinking of how one could go further into the process.  I was thinking that the next step would be getting to know your skills.  In Kai's case she went into addiction as the next step.  I think she should have included a step before addiction, because it seems like she skips from learning right to addiction.  But how can you get addicted to something you've only recently learned?

Section #1:  Third Review

        My next  review is of Carol Ohta's report on Developmental Patterns of Learning the internet.  Carol talks about the learning phase that she is going through and she seems to cluster it all into one.  She says "I found that one can still maintain frustration, confusion, doubt and anxiety; even though you're experienced with the World Wide Web".  Which is very true for this class.

    I think Carol should have broken down her learning process into parts.  When I think of a learning process, I think of a beginning, middle and end.  In Carol's case she seems to hint that she was not starting from scratch.  Instead she says that she had experience with the material.  So her difficulty was not learning new material but first trying to apply the material and then she says she got frustrated with trying to do the details.

    I think I would place her learning process into three phases.  I would call her first phase "trying".  Which encompasses her having the knowledge.  The only problem is learning how to apply it.  The second phase would be called "putting down the needed material", which includes writing your report.  That's all this would include, because the content is what really counts.  The third phase would be called "details", which would encompass her problems with the colors, effects, etc...  I put this last because, like I said before it's the content that counts.  If you plan on putting special effects into your report do it after the content is saved. 

Here is a link to Carol's page:  http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/409af96/cohta/409/409report2.html

Section #1:  Fourth Review

    My last review is on Michelle Alonzo's report on developmental patterns on learning the internet.  Michelle takes her learning process in five phases.  She calls them (1) Frustration and Anger, (2)  Defeat, (3)  Glimmer of Light, (4)  Motivation and (5)  Feeling of Success.  Here is a link to Michelle's page:  http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/409af96/malonzo/report2.html

    Michelle's first phase is called Frustration and Anger.  In this phase everything is new to you.  You are starting from scratch and you're having a heck of a time trying to figure everything out.  She says "There were times when I felt like throwing the computer terminal on the ground because it wasn't doing what it was supposed to do".  I can sympathize with her at this phase.

    Her next phase is called defeat.  At first you might think that this phase means she has given up.  What she really means is she feels like the computer (technology) has defeated her.  I like when she says "you feel like quitting, dropping the class, or just plain indulging in chocolate ice cream.  I've felt like this many times.

    The third phase is called Glimmer of Light.  This phase is when you realize what you're supposed to be doing and run straight for the finish line.  Everything starts to come into perspective for you and "you feel a little spark of confidence that can help you to go further".

    The fourth phase is called Motivation.  This is where you start working and realize that you're doing the right things and the computer is doing what it's supposed to.  Things start to come together and "you see your potential, you feel like you want to do more and even try new things on the internet". 

    The final phase in Michelle's learning process is called Feeling of Success.  You've done it. You're proud of it and you don't want to ever do it again (just joking).  She says "When you look at your pages and find that they are what you wanted them to look like, you feel as if you had succeeded and you feel a great sense of accomplishment".  This is the climax of everything.  You've learned everything from scratch and you've turned it into a full flegged web page.

     I like Michelle's detailed steps.  Although I do disagree with calling her second phase defeat.  It should be called something like "dealing with technology", or "frustrating technology", but not defeat.  The title doesn't sound like you want to go any further and it just gives the reader the wrong idea.  I like how each of her phases builds on each other and how she doesn't skip anything.  She details everything in the learning process.

    When reading this report I think I would have went one step further though.  I would have called one phase "the procrastination" phase.  I'm not sure whether I would put this phase at the beginning or the ending though.  It is something that should be looked at though, because people can have all the knowledge they need to do the webpage.  But they will still have anxiety over the project if they start it late.

Section #2:  Self Observation Data

    This is my self-observation Data section of my report.  Here is a link to my Forms.  In this section I will explain how I gathered my data and how it fit into my Bibliography report.  Here are links to the Forum instructions and my bibliography report.

    For each forum discussion that we did, we had to look up on the internet websites that fit into the five allowed forum topics.  After finding relevant information on the internet we would post what we found on the forum website.  After posting we had to fill out these research forms.  These forms asked us questions like, what topic did we look up, how long did it take us, how did we feel, etc... 

    So in my experience, what I did to search for my research topic was go to google.com.  Which is the only search engine that I use now a days, because it gives me a task bar that shows the relevancy of the website to the topic that I am searching for.  After typing my search topic I would look at, at least three websites that were relevant to my topic.  Then I would pick one out of the three that would be most interesting to talk about in my forum discussion. 

     After posting my forum for that week, I would go to fill out my research forms.  To tell you the truth I did not like filling these forms out at all.  I had anxiety every time I sat down to fill out the form.  Not because it was boring, but because the form was so long.  It asked a lot of repetitive questions.  Having to fill out the forms did influence my search session, because every time I sat down to search I knew I would have to do the forms.  So it made me mad and hesitant to do my forum discussions.

    The data in the forms most accurately reflects how I felt in the search session, because I would make it a point to do the forms right after I posted my forum discussion.  So the data is pretty accurate of what happened during my search sessions.  The data on the forms also shows a pattern.  When you look at the questions concerning the search itself, my responses are all that the search was easy and that my anxiety was low.

    If you compare those results to those about the questions about the form, you will see that there is a high anxiety level and the responses are that the form is not easy and that it takes up a lot of time.  The following table is a listing of what I responded to each question from numbers five to twenty-five.  I listed them in a table so that you can see the average among the answers.

    As you can see for #5, all of my answers are thirty minutes.  Not because I cheated, but because that was about how long it took me to do my search.  I think most of my answers came out so consistently because I made it a point to do the forms right after my forum posting.  As far as the explanations go for some of these questions.  My number answer and my explanations go along together.  I think all my information is valid through out the forms.

    Looking at my forms I see that regarding my literacy with the internet, I tend to be quite relaxed.  I think it's because I do it so much for other classes that it comes naturally.  As for my data regarding the computer and search engines that I used, the reason why they are so consistent is because most of the time I did my searches at home (which is easy to access) and I only use one search engine most of the time because I find that google is the most competent out of all the search engines I've come in contact with.

    Overall, I am very happy how my data for the forms came out.  Looking at my forms now, I am so happy that I pushed myself to do the forms. 

Section #3: Counseling Session

    On November 8th, I went to a counseling session at Hamilton Library.  This was a study being done by the information science department and we participated in their experiment because it was part of our research report.  In this session we were given three topics to search on.  A research assistant took notes on what key words we used and how fast it took us to get relevant results.  Each topic had a maximum time limit of ten minutes.

    I can't say that I learned anything from the counseling session, except for the fact that I learned about an even better search engine called Vivisimo.  Other then that, we were not instructed on anything.  We were not taught anything and we didn't really talk to the assistant at the session.  The only other thing that we did at the session other than search was fill out a survey before and after the session.

    As for giving suggestions for future generation student about how they can better learn at this session...Well, I can't really give any suggestions because I didn't learn anything new.  All I was, was a participant and nothing more.  I wasn't taught anything new.

Section #4: The Psychology of Information Literacy

        Dr. Leon's article on Generational Curriculum entails why he makes us post all of our reports on the web.  In his article he explains that it is part of a bigger picture.  By placing it on the web, it gives other students access to previous classes and it also gives current class members a chance to see their classmates reports.  This can only help a student with their reports, especially when they are taking a web-related class for the first time.

    Dr. Leon talks about how each semester the "library" of reports grows more and more, which can only help other students.  He also says "It not only serves as a constantly growing educational and cultural resource, but also as an impressive ethnographic record of the development and evolution of a cyber-community classroom".  After reading this article I realize why we post our reports on the web.  It's amazing when you think about, what you are becoming a part of.

    By taking this class you are setting an example for future students and at the same time we are part of the evolution of a cyber-community classroom.  That is so...unreal.  To think that we are helping to start something, just blows my mind.    So really, my research report is going down into a library of reports that years from now people will be able to access and hopefully my reports will help other students grasp the complex questions and concepts that is required for this class.

    The term information literacy might not be familiar to you.  It is important to know this term because that is what we are being taught in this class indirectly when we have to search for topics and build web pages.  The most common definition of information literacy that I found was, "the ability to locate, evaluate, and use information to become independent life-long learners".  Here is a link to the page with that definition: http://www.ala.org/acrl/nili/whatis.html#background.

    So what that definition is saying, is that information literacy is not just being computer literate. But literate in the sense that you can locate any kind of information you need, whether it be on the internet or library.  It's just the ability to know what steps you need to take to get the information that you need.  This ties in very nicely with the article on Generational Curriculum.

    Because like I was saying before, our reports are making like a library and those reports show how we sought out our information.  An example would be our Annotated Bibliography report.  We had specific topics we had to deal with and in our report we talked about how we got them.  Another example would be our Research report.  We filled out the forms, we had a limited number of topics and we detailed how we searched for them on the web.  So the general curriculum is showing how we formed our information literacy.

    Another important part to Dr. Leons' article is the three-fold self.  This entails Affective, Cognitive and Sensorimotor.  For Dr. James he has three parts to learning the internet.  The first is Becoming Information Literate Through Generational Identification.  The second phase is Becoming Self-Directed Autonomous Learners Through Generational Modeling and the third phase is Exercising Leadership and Practicing Inventiveness Through Generational Loyalty.  In each of these phases you go through an affective, cognitive and sensorimotor objective. 

    This means that you go through little tiny steps internally so that you can get to the next phase.  Dr. James explains learning the internet very easily.  In each phase you go from affective to cognitive then to sensorimotor (which is like the physical action).  That makes a lot of sense, since we all think about what we are learning first, then we act on what we are thinking (which is the cognitive part).

    Indirectly this class is teaching us information literacy.  Dr. Leon is giving us practice in something that is very important, especially since everything is computerized now-a-days.  So feel some kind of relief when you do your reports and know that Dr. Leon is not just making the directions hard for you on purpose.  He is actually teaching you a very important skill and at the same time making you a part of a cyber-library of reports!

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