Literacy Skills in the Online Environment
We encourage educators to adopt a broad view of literacy. It seems obvious that we encounter information in many formats and the exposure to information in these multiple formats outside of the school setting must be acknowledged for at least the quantity of this exposure. Our values and our knowledge are influenced by these informal learning experiences. Of course, educators are also beginning to diversify the media formats used in the classroom and to send students into the unmoderated environment of the Internet to seek information resources. In a way, we are simultaneously attempting to identify the challenges present in exposure to this information landscape and proposing strategies for the development of skills necessary to address these challenges. Sometimes the analyses of challenges and related strategies have been based in the formal methods of the social sciences, but often those with considerable experience have simply offered their insights to others. Work in this area is new and we offer perspectives from several sources we feel will be helpful to educators.
Are online "reading" skills the same skills students use in learning from textbooks?
From about the fourth grade on, we expect students to learn from textbooks. Of course, educators do engage students with other instructional resources, but what changes when these instructional resources are expanded to include what is available online. One review of online learning we consulted described many educators as assuming an "isomorphism between online and offline reading" while research has begun to demonstrate important differences (Leu, et al., 2007). Our interpretation of the differences these researchers identify as making outside of class, online reading unique suggests that the differences are more a function of the purposes readers bring to the task than to physical differences in reading from screen versus paper. Possibly, educator assumptions of "isomorphism" may prevent important skills that are seldom emphasized and thus infrequently practiced from being developed.
One of the most basic observations made by this research group was that learners very frequently come to the online reading environment with the intent to answer a question or solve a problem. In the primer, we described such a skill set as information problem solving. When the learner has a specific goal in mind, it should not be surprising that what follows is different from recreational or textbook reading. Comprehending a resources one has been given differs in many ways from solving a specific information problem when the necessary resources are not in hand. In fact, comprehension becomes only one of a broader set of skills.
In the online environment, students must know how to:
- use a search engine to locate information,
- read search engine results to identify promising resources,
- read a web page to efficiently determine if task relevant information is present,
- determine if the information present on a given site is credible, and
- integrate information across sites to answer questions.
It is our impression that within this list the issue of credibility has received the most attention. Educators are concerned that students will accept what they locate online without concern for who generated the content or why. We will return to this obviously important issue and consider it in some depth, but we want to comment on several other observations first.
For example, consider how a traditional online search begins. A search returns a page listing "hits" in response to the search terms. Leu and colleagues observe that adolescents frequently fail to take advantage of the information present on this "results page". Rather than process this information, many use a "click and look" strategy. They visit the sites and then attempt to surmise whether the site will offer useful information. Some of these sites could have been eliminated by using the short descriptive material on the results page and the learner would not risk distraction from visits to material unrelated to the self imposed goal.
The content from a web site is also initially processed in a way that is very different from how learners process the material in a textbook. Because readers are attempting to answer questions they first quickly search to locate what they hope is relevant information and once relevant information is identified attempt to ascertain if an answer is present or if what has been found must be combined with other information. All content does not receive the same attention and even when relevant information is identified one of the decisions made may be to move on to other resources to fully meet the learner's needs. It is not only important that many tasks require the integration of several information sources, but that the selection of these sources will differ from reader to reader. Some of this variability will result from which search results the learner initially investigates and some variability will result from choices made while interpreting the value of what has been read. Leu and colleagues describe this as readers actively constructing the texts they will read. Even when readers start with the same goal, their choices (which search results, which links within a page) can result in them reading from different sources. Perhaps educators might better understand some of the unique issues learners often face online if it could be described as a challenge. What about reading textbooks that were prepared for your students would offer them practice in the skills necessary to prepare their own textbooks? Of course, what students are doing is fashioning their learning resources from pieces they assemble from search and decisions that involve emphasizing content and following selected links, but the process is quite different than reviewing a source from cover to cover.
If this is a useful assessment of learning from online resources and we tend to think that it is, how might we begin to prepare students to do this well. As we acknowledged earlier, some of the skills associated with online reading have received much more attention than others and what we describe here are some of those topics that has been on the back burner. The researchers who describe these decision making processes do make an interesting comment that we find intriguing. They contend that in addressing these skills that socially mediated experiences, working on tasks within small groups, may be as effective as formal instructional lessons.
We understand this to mean that the interactions that would accompany various choices in a social setting could serve an instructional purposes.
- Which of these links should we try?
- Do you see anything here that might be helpful?
- Shall we continue reading or move on to something else?
Here, teacher led demonstrations with students as participants, and then small groups of students working on information problems offer a general approach. The interactive white board might be the perfect tool for a group investigation in a classroom setting. A couple of students sharing a computer and working on a webquest would represent another social scenario.