Christina Kealoha
8/29/95
Psy 409
Dr. James
Assignment: Use Netscape buttons (directory;search;cool stuff;
hot stuff; stop; back).
How valuable for later use is this knowledge or skill going to be for
you?
Not useful 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 Very useful
This week's rating = 10
When I first got on the internet, I felt confused and disoriented. I didn't understand what I was supposed to be doing and I felt a lot of anxiety because I wasn't sure that I would be able to complete all of the tasks. I also felt inadequate because I didn't know what was going on. So, to relieve my tension, I first did something that I am familiar with -- e-mail. I know this was not really part of the assignment, but it really helped me to relax and feel more comfortable, so that by the time I was actually on Netscape, I felt more confident that I could accomplish the tasks that we were assigned. It turned out that my worries were for nothing because this week's assignment was very basic and did not require much complex thought. All I had to do w as click here or click there and then see where it led me.
Getting into Netscape, I felt very impatient because it took so long for the program to load up. After my initial anxiety subsided, impatience was the main source of my negative emotions, which is why I gave a rating of "7" for the amount of negative em otions that this experience costed me. Every time I clicked on something, I had to wait for the computer to hook up with the host computer of what I was trying to get to. All this waiting time costed me a lot of negative emotions in that I constantly fo und myself feeling impatient. This (what I found to be) excessive waiting time is the reason why I did not give the computer and Internet systems a higher rating.
Another source of negative emotions derived from the fact that I had stayed at the computer lab for so long. I logged on at 12:20 pm and did not leave until 2:10 pm. That's almost two hours! Perhaps for those who are used to being on the internet, tha t's not a very long time, but for me, it seemed like eons and I began to feel weary and developed a dull headache. That's when I knew it was time for me to log off. Hopefully in the future, I will be able to complete my assignment quicker. If not, I wi ll just come in on multiple occasions so that I will not have to stay on the computer quite so long. Who knows, perhaps I will build my Internet tolerance and will be able to remain on the computer for longer periods of time.On the positive side, the tasks that I learned to do this week will be invaluable in my future attempts at exploring my assigned topic -- health-related internet. The "search" tab was by far the most valuable in looking for areas on the internet related to my field. This is why I rated this skill as being very useful. I also think that I will be getting good at this because the tasks this week were fairly straightforward and simple to do. Anyone who can read can click on buttons which will lead to an other area of interest.
I felt that I was persistent in accomplishing this week's tasks, even though my first attempts at most of the tasks were unsuccessful because my connection was refused for most of the commands that I clicked on. I went straight across the screen trying out different commands, and one by one, they each told me that my connection's been refused. Although, at first, I felt confused and frustrated (another source of my negative emotions), I was finally granted access to "Newsgroups". Although I didn't ent irely understand what was going on, I felt pleased that I had finally gotten into something. After I was finished with these tasks, I decided to go back and try the assignment again, and this time, my access was not denied. Thus, I felt that I was persi stent in attaining my goal of completing the assignment. Rather than merely giving up after my initial failures, I tried again until I was able to complete the assignment. This is why I gave myself such a good rating on the last question.
I didn't feel that there were any noticeable differences among the subtasks in that all of them required me to click on a button, and then that button led me to a particular place. Some were more predictable than others. For example, I knew that if I c licked on "Back" that it would take me back to the previous screen. However, I had no idea what to expect when I clicked on "What's Cool?" I didn't know if "cool" referred to temperature or something that's "neat" or if it was some kind of special code word that I didn't know about yet. As it turned out, my second guess was the correct one, but prior to actually getting into the "What's Cool?" file, I really had no idea what to expect. Although the subtasks were basically very similar, once I got into each file, they did differ slightly in what I had to do from there. For instance, in what's cool, I only had to read through the files and then click on one I might want to check out, and that was a mode of exploration. By contrast, in netsearch, I was required to type in a topic and then the computer led me to more files that I could check out, so there were slight differences in complexities, although those differences were not all that dramatic.
I didn't feel like I had any fossilized errors or repeated lapses, but I did notice that it was really easy to get caught up in going through every single file that doesn't really have to do with my topic of interest. At first, when I went through "What 's Cool?", I was going through every single file. Then it dawned on me that there are so many files, and I was only on the "B"'s (going in alphabetical order), that it would take me all day at the rate I was going. I needed to make some adjustments in m y search method if I was ever going to get anywhere, so I dragged the side box down the page to fast forward to the letter that I wanted to be at. I think my inefficiency was merely a result of my awe over the system. It was all new to me and I wanted t o see everything. Now I realize that I can't possibly go through every single file if I'm going to accomplish anything. The internet is so vast and so filled with files, that there are tons of files just within my topic of interest. In order to get to all of them, I'll need to be more focused.
All in all, I felt that this was a very productive initial experience on Netscape. I got over my anxiety toward using something that I was completely unfamiliar with, and I was able to complete all the tasks with relative ease.