Nitsa Mc Carthy

Psy. 409

Nov. - 14 - 1995

W/ Dr. Leon James



Week 12 Report

Skills Generation Two Cybercommunity Has Acquired From Team Reports

Family Focus on Internet: Skills YoonWhan Cho has acquired from Team Reports


Team reports, team reports review! So what skills did YoonWhan Cho acquire from his team reports? Yoon's team reports are on Family Focus on Internet which covers topics such as parenting and children; marriage and intimacy; women's issues; pets; home improvement; shopping; budgeting; etc.

Yoon on Family Focus on Internet Part One (includes team reports 1-6)


In the first half of his team reports(team reports 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). Yoon conveys his thoughts on family focus on the Internet and explains how the sites that he explored were related to social psychology. He briefly summarizes the content of the documents that he found and their tone and style. He also describes his personal experiences while making a search and conveys emotions such as boredom, excitation, and interest. Yoon does provide links to sites that he found and he generally puts them at the beginning of the first paragraph. He discusses how he found the sites and includes search tools (with no links) that he used. Throughout his first six reports Yoon used the same search tools or directory buttons such as Net Directory, Net Search, Lycos, and MetaCrawler and his search query remained basically the same "parenting." Whenever he used one of the above search engines, Yoon either put a search query for "parenting" or picked "parenting" from the table of contents or index that the search site offered.

As for links, Yoon includes in his reports several links to different sites but he also eliminates some (e.g. links to search tools or to sites that he reported on). He doesn't just name the links as they appear on the original site but rather tends to elaborate on them which I found very helpful and creative. For the reader's convenience, Yoon often includes links that say "for more information click here..."

Besides being fixated on the query "parenting," Yoon doesn't only report on the sites that he found, he also discusses their content, style, tone, and their use to social psychology. Sometimes he mentions to whom or to what audience the sites were designed and whether he found the search tools efficient.

Yoon on Family Focus on Internet Part Two (includes team reports 7-12)


In his later team reports (team reports 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12). Yoon still queries "parenting" issues more than other topics but he does tend to pick various sites that are related to this topic. Yoon did add some variety to his sample of search tools by including search engines such a DejaNews, Excite, Nikos, and Galaxy. He sometimes even compares and contrasts those search sites and reports what he thought of them. Yoon continues to report his views on various sites and what they have to offer but he lacks reporting about their use to social psychology or about their style, tone, and to whom those sites were designed.

Also, in his later team reports, Yoon became more creative. He made his reports more catchy and interesting to the viewer's eye by including the sites logos. In a sense, it is an efficient and easy method to decorate a page. In addition, he got little bit (but not completely) off "parenting" issues and explored sites on family and health, and mail-order brides.

Areas for Yoon to improve:

1) make sure to create links to all the sites that you report on; 2) go behind the level of reporting what site you have found by elaborating on your thoughts, views, and feelings (yet, don't display tears) about the site or document; 3) Focus less on the "parenting" issues and try to explore other topics. Note: these recommendations do not apply only to Yoon but also to me and other Generation Two students.

Learning the Internet: principals Cynthia Yap, Ryan Yamauchi, and Curtis Nakao have acquired from Team Reports


The next team reports that I reviewed were those of Cynthia Yap. Yet, when I read the first few reports I realized that Cynthia Yap, Ryan Yamauchi, and Curtis Nakao share their team reports pages and also take turns in reporting what sites they have found. That is, each week someone else from their team is responsible to report what s/he and the other team members have found. The focus of their team reports is on Learning the Internet which includes sub-topics such as: online courses; Netscape Handbook; online documents; FAQ databases; Usenet discussion; help facilities; Home Pages with help and suggestions; HTML tricks and useful tips; etc.

The first half of their team reports varies in content and structure, depending on whose turn was to report. Basically, these team members took team reports in its literal sense (with some exception to Cynthia). That is, they briefly summarize what sites they have found and what those sites provide. Sometimes they included UNIX and HTML commands (which I found very helpful) but other then that their reports were rather plain. Although each of them explored different sites, which makes their reports more comprehensive, they did not include their thoughts and views about those sites. Therefore, they have eliminated critical issues such as the document's tone and style, its use to social psychology as they see it, and their opinions, thoughts and feelings while exploring those sites.

Curtis and Ryan tended to report in a similar style: "see what Cynthia, Curtis, and Ryan found..." and then went on to report what they and others have found. Cynthia, on the other hand, reported in a "we" style, hence, her reports were more cohesive since for her it was a group and not an individual effort. Also, when it was her turn to report she did mention the use of sites explored to social psychology, but she didn't discuss how? Not only that, Cynthia, Curtis and Ryan did not mention how they stumbled upon their search queries and they usually provide sites with no links to them.

From week 8 on the team changed their team reports format by reporting individually on their findings. Therefore, they put more effort into their reports, thus, were less affected by the social-loafing syndrome. For example, Curtis starts to describe what search engines he used and how many hits he got for his search queries. Also, he provides links to sites and discusses the document's contents. Yet, he still doesn't elaborate or speculate on the site's use to social psychology. Ryan continues to give brief "reports" on several sites but no more than that, and Cynthia tries to cover all issues, but there is a lot of room for improvement. (See above for some ways to improve your reporting skills).

The Internet Itself: principals that Nitsa Mc Carthy usually followed in Team Reports


The focus of my team reports is on the Internet Itself which covers sub-topics such as: history of the Internet; Internet societies and conferences; Internet news and announcements; e-journals about the Internet; e-mail digests about the Internet; Internet branches and services (commercial, government, institutional, organizational); etc. Each week I cover different sub-topics but sometimes I use the "etc." option and report on something interesting that I accidentally found while exploring the Net. In those cases I classify my findings under the Internet Services domain. I know that selection bias do exist not only in my reports but in the reports of other Generation Two students. We can't help it! We only select sites that we "think" are interesting. Yet, sometimes we get lucky and sometimes we don't (e.g. when classmates get bored and sleepy in class).

I usually try to relate the use of the sites I have explored to social psychology. Yet, some sites make contributions to social psychology and some don't. Therefore, at the end of each team report I try to make sense of what I have found, and determine how each of them contributes not only to social psychology but to humanity as a whole.



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