Young people and the internet

This article is from the January 2004 issue of Update. 

This year Education Secretary Charles Clarke stated that ‘It will be the quality of the digital resources and effective deployment in teaching and learning that will make a difference in standards’.1 The UK government believes that ‘new opportunities are opening up as we see the potential of new technologies to change our lives for the better’.2 Expectations of internet-based information resources in relation to learning are great, and these expectations ‘are often used as the argument for the introduction of computers and ICT in schools and other educational settings’.3 Yet much of the recent rhetoric concerning the benefits of access to internet-based resources is based on speculation. More empirical studies are needed,4 which is why I undertook research to investigate how young people actually interacted with these resources.

Research design
Measuring the value of a service or resource can be problematic. It has to involve direct contact with the users of the service or resource in order to reflect the values of the individual user. Although quantitative measurement is an essential component of any investigation into service provision and use, ‘for many information professionals it does not go far enough in helping to understand the meaning behind the figures, or in addressing issues which are not readily quantifiable’.5

The discussion of findings that follows draws on data from a longitudinal, in-depth study of 16 individuals over two years during Years 9 & 10 of secondary education.6 Four schools were used, chosen because of their location, local socio-economic factors and the level of educational attainment of their pupils. Four children were selected from each school by ‘sequential snowball’ sampling. In this method, one child is selected and then the next is chosen based on how different they are from the first — in this case, in terms of their access and use of the internet, educational attainment and so on. Data was collected from diaries, observations, interviews, documentary analysis, focus groups and key informant knowledge.

This research recognised four major groups of factors which determine the value that access to electronic information resources can have for the individual:

Technological and organisational factors
Physical access to electronic resources includes not only what hardware and software are available, but also whether the user has the information-handling skills to make the best use of these resources, and whether there is appropriate technical support. What hardware is available in libraries depends on the emphasis placed on the resource by management, and whether funding and technical expertise are available at that location.

Although policies on the provision of these resources do exist in individual institutions, there was little consistency across authorities. Moreover, very often policies within individual institutions were not followed. Those students who had home access were very aware of the disparity in standards, claiming that they preferred to use resources ‘at home because you can learn to do things by yourself and it’s easier to use’. They could ‘get more stuff, and normally the quality of things is better’.

Although physical access may be available, very often it is at a cost to the individual. This can cause frustration. Those who do not have access at home are very often the same people who can ill afford to pay the cost of access in the school or in the public library. Connell and Franklin7 claim that ‘the greatest barriers to the internet are economic and geographic’. They go on to say that it ‘is not just overcoming the inability to pay for access but also the inability to afford the necessary computer equipment and training to use it’. Schools and public libraries may well be in the best position to overcome these barriers but these barriers still inhibit access: ‘You have to pay £2 for half an hour and I can’t so I don’t bother going on now… I cannot afford it, I spent all my paper round money one week but I’m not doing that again.’

Cognitive factors
Intellectual access to, and use of, electronic information resources depends on a number of factors. The successful use of these resources is directly linked to the individual’s capacity to acquire and apply the skills demanded by the resources. Cognitive factors include information skills and hypertext navigation. The proliferation of accessible information has placed an even greater demand on the individual to acquire and apply these skills on a daily basis across the entire spectrum of information seeking.8 Some past research claims that the same skills used to find out things in the print-based environment can be used to locate information in the electronic environment. But those skills cannot always be transferred to the electronic environment.9 Students were aware that they were not equipped with appropriate skills to obtain maximum value from the electronic resources: ‘I’m not sure I’m doing things the right way, I get there in the end some of the time but it should be better than that shouldn’t it?’

Generally people appeared to have little knowledge of standard search procedure.

‘It’s easier, it’s much more user friendly, because in a book you’ve got say 12 volumes in an encyclopedia of science, you have to go through each volume looking through the index trying to find the page, having to search for it. But on the internet you just click on the word you want and most of the time you do get what you want but like I said you have to go through a few steps but it’s quicker than going through all the books.’

This supports evidence from other research that users need to be focused on a specific task and devise a strategy before they begin.10

Navigating the three-dimensional hypertext environment isn’t always the liberating experience it is claimed to be. Often it can be confusing: ‘I sometimes get quite lost if I’ve been on loads of different pages, I can never remember where everything is and I get really fed up.’ There appeared to be very little formal instruction given to the young people in this study. The general opinion was that access and using electronic information was quick and easy, and no structured teaching was required.

Affective factors
Affective factors include motivation, personal purpose, physical location of the resource, user expectations and self-efficacy issues. It is commonly assumed that users, and in particular young people, are familiar with new technology and have the intellectual ability to apply it. This creates high expectations that young people are not always able to live up to.

The very nature of the resource brings with it a high level of motivation: ‘Every-thing looks better on the computer, it’s more interactive, you can jump around and have more fun looking for things.’ Media hype, the image of the computer as a gateway to all knowledge and the fashionable nature of the medium all encourage use. ‘I get a bit frustrated at times but it’s still loads better than looking through all the books, I spend longer looking for things but I’d give up if I was using the books in the library because I’d get bored quicker.’ They used the resources for project-based research and recreational activities, but this motivation was often very fragile. They were quickly discouraged when those resources did not respond as expected and did not perform as promised.

There needs to be some alignment between user expectations and system capabilities in order to reduce the feeling of individual failure that is often promoted by these resources. The consistent hype concerning the capabilities of electronic resources has created a new mythology that exaggerates the individual’s inability to use these resources profitably.

‘I get fed up of it. Sometimes I just give up, I know it’s doing a lot of work but that doesn’t help me when I’m sitting here waiting for it. You start to wonder what you’ve done wrong and if I have to go back and do it again I’d rather not bother.’

Social factors
The affordability of access to electronic information resources remains an issue and is likely to for some considerable time. The young people in this study were very aware of the difference having home access could make. Cost was the most significant reason given for those who did not have home access.

Research has shown that peer interaction, in the form of collaboration and instruction, has a significant role to play in learning for young people. The typical framework for tutor-learner interaction is the giving of instruction by the tutor and the response to that instruction from the learner. Peer interaction includes both tutoring and collaboration. This research suggests that peer tutoring and collaboration take place at all stages of the information-seeking process, from acquisition of technical skills and information skills to the information use stage. There is also evidence to suggest that this interaction was actively discouraged in all educational sites visited in this research.

Gwen, a low achiever in all subjects, had never tried to access or use the internet and was not confident in attempting anything new. Gwen discussed how her friend had helped her to access the internet and shown her how to copy and paste material from there to her own document.

Researcher: So how did your friend show you? did she sit with you?

Gwen: Yeah, I got into the computer first and then she told me how to do it. I think it’s got on the bottom ‘go to next page’. Just do that when you want to go to another page, you just type something in then it was like loads of information and I just picked bits out that I needed to know.

Researcher: Do you like working with your friend?

Gwen: Yeah, I think that’s good because we share ideas and that and you learn, at least I do.

During an observation, Gwen asked for instructions constantly, instructions which her friend gave her willingly and which were pitched at a level Gwen could cope with. By the penultimate observation she was accessing the internet and retrieving relevant information, although she did need her friend to be there. After the tutorial session given by the friend the researcher asked the friend if she minded spending so much time helping Gwen. She said: ‘No, it’s good fun and I’m not good at much so when I am it feels great.’ This was typical of the mutual benefit of peer interaction.

There were many examples in this study of successful peer tutoring. Eddie frequently spent time tutoring his friends.

‘I showed my mate how to write his homepage. We spent ages on it. I usually go around to his house because my Dad uses our computer a lot. You don’t get shown that sort of stuff at school because it isn’t really school stuff, is it. I showed him how to find other stuff on the internet because he hadn’t used it before. I learn something new a lot of the time as well, it’s good fun anyway because it feels like I’ve got something to show him, you know, like I know something he doesn’t.’

Collaboration seemed to be more significant than tutoring. Karen preferred to work with her peers; she did not always need their input but it gave her confidence to know they were there.

‘I like working in the library, I find it quite easy because it’s not, well there’s supposed to be silence but there isn’t and then you can like talk to your friends and work it out with someone else. When I go on the internet at home it’s more boring and I never find as much. We all have something to say and some move to try.’

Once, Nicola was having considerable difficulty finding relevant information and she missed not having someone to work with. ‘It’s better when I go on with Katie, we have a good laugh trying to find the answers and I don’t feel as stupid when we both keep getting loads of hits. We always find something but it never takes as long as this.’

The young people in this study demonstrated a willingness to share information retrieved from the internet that they claimed they couldn’t get from more traditional resources. Lee tried to explain why information located through the internet was different.

Lee: ‘Sometimes you work alone because, we didn’t all have to do vivisection, you just had to do a leaflet about animal rights and we went up in groups of who chose what, because some of my mates chose hunting and they went on at a different time to me. So like they could share information with other people doing your topic and like share websites and stuff.’

Researcher: Would you do that with books?

Lee: No.

Researcher: Why?

Lee: Because the stuff on the web is for everyone, like it’s just there it’s open to everyone to use and we just pass it around.

Researcher: Isn’t it the same with a book though, that’s written down for everyone to read?

Lee: No, because you have to go and get that from the shelves and read it for yourself, it’s sort of private.

It was very natural to share information from the internet without appearing to give anything up. Karen explained that they frequently, and casually, exchanged their research findings. ‘We were doing it for history that time but we always end up telling someone what we find, sometimes in pairs swapping information and stuff and if you can’t find something ask someone else and see if they’ve got it.’

All the learning resource centres in this study had a policy of one person to each computer and discouraging peer interaction appeared to be common practice.

Ruth enjoyed working with other people and often relied on her friends to help her with problems. She couldn’t do this when using the internet. ‘They do mind if there’s more than one on a computer, it’s best to get two computers near each other because if you like go and talk to them they’ll shout at you until you get back to your seat. It doesn’t matter that you’re asking for help or something they just tell you to shut up and go and sit down, it’s just one to a computer in here.’

Annie had a solution to this problem, ‘We aren’t allowed to sit together because they reckon we are just messing around, it’s a bit of a pain but it doesn’t matter really because we just email each other with any questions. It would sometimes be easy to just sit next to each other but it’s good to feel like you’ve managed to do it together anyway, even if you’re not allowed to.’

Girls appeared to spend much less, if any, time playing games, preferring to spend time in ‘chat rooms’. Boys spent a lot of time playing games and searching on the internet for free games and game cheats. This supports the finding by Land11 that there is clear gender disparity in the use of online resources.

One issue was the level at which males and females gauged their own ability when it came to searching for information. During the interviews the girls frequently made light of their own abilities, often claiming to be totally inexperienced with electronic resources. But when observed they often appeared to have a much greater level of competence than they had indicated.

They explained this with comments such as ‘Oh, when I said I was no good at using this [Altavista] I meant that there’s probably a better way of doing it. I do usually find stuff but I don’t suppose it’s always the best way of doing it.’

Conversely, the boys were keen to demonstrate their knowledge of internet resources during interviews. With the exception of two, who both used these resources frequently, observations revealed that they often had difficulty in applying the skills they had laid claim to. They would frequently blame the resource, rather than themselves, for errors in retrieval. ‘This is all just rubbish, I can’t tell if it will be any use or not. This system doesn’t work very well. It’s been a waste of time tonight.’

Any approach to managing electronic resources should take into account the value of these resources and their impact on the users and how the nature of provision can influence this relationship.12

The value of electronic information resources is not only concerned with the resource itself but also intrinsically linked to the environment in which use occurs. The construction of an environment that ensures best use of these resources is the responsibility of all those who design and control that environment. This includes schools, public libraries and home — in fact, any location that provides access to information.

Electronic information resources have become surrounded by their own mythology. Myths have been created and compounded by marketing strategies’ (AOL advertisements are one example) imaginative exaggeration and distorted perceptions of reality.13 Training and education in the use and application of these resources are necessary to ensure that their full potential is realised as well as their limitations acknowledged.

References
1 Phil Revell. ‘One-stop search engine — for professionals only’. The Guardian, 11 March 2003, p. 2.
2 Survey of Information Technology in Schools in England. Department for Education and Employment. HMSO, 1997.
3 P. Hernwall. Children, Cyborgs and Cyberspace: computer communication in the world of children. Centre for the Social Study of Childhood Conference, Hull University, 1999.
4 P. Williams. ‘The net generation: the experiences, attitudes and behaviour of children using the internet for their own purposes.’ Aslib Proceedings 51(9), 1999, pp. 315-322.
5 G. E. Gorman and P. Clayton. Qualitative Research for the Information Professional: a practical handbook. Library Association Publishing, 1997, p. 25.
6 A.J. Pickard. Access to Internet Resources: their role in the provision of learning opportunities to young people. A constructivist inquiry. Doctoral thesis: Northumbria University, 2002.
7 T.H. Connell and C. Franklin. ‘The Internet: educational issues’. Library Trends, 42(4), 1994, pp. 608-625.
8 D. Johnson. ‘Student access to the Internet.’ Emergency Librarian, 22(3), 1995, pp. 8-12.
9 S.C. Yang. ‘Information seeking as problem-solving using a qualitative approach to uncover the novice learners’ information-seeking processes in a Perseus hypertext system.’ Library and Information Science Research, 19(1), 1997, pp. 71-92.
10 M. Spaven. ‘Surfing, Skiving or Seriously Searching: what are the sixth form doing on the internet?’ In G. Dubber (ed.) The Internet, the Secondary School Library and the Independent Learner. School Library Association, 1999. pp. 31-36.
11 M. J. Land. ‘Evidence of gender disparity in children’s computer use and activities’. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, New Orleans, LA, 4-7- August 1999.
12 P. Dixon, A. Pickard and H. Robson. ‘Developing a criteria-based quality framework for measuring value.’ Performance Measures and Metrics, 3 (1), 2002, pp. 5-9.
13 G. Klienman. Myths and Realities about Technology in K-12. Education Development Centre Inc., 2000 (www.edc.org/LNT/news/issues14/feature1.htm).

Alison Jane Pickard is a SeniorLecturer in the Division of Information & Communication Studies, School of Informatics, University of Northumbria at Newcastle (alison.pickard@unn.ac.uk).