When researching the topic of "digital literacy" and "media literacy", I had a significant challenge in finding articles with relevant and recent research on the topic. Some of the studies that I was able to find were from almost 10 years ago and although still relevant, the statistics seem to be irrelevant now with the exponential growth of social media use amongst adolescents as well as the capabilities of the common smartphone in today's world. Many studies were conducted between 2000 and 2005 on media literacy and student's ability to understand the messages in print media but little research has been done when combining digital literacy and media literacy to assess students ability to analyze digital media and its messages.
One such study was conducted by Greenhow (2009) with children in an afterschool program for low income students who were striving to attend college. In a survey given to over 800 low income high school students, she found that many students turn to the web to seek out a variety of information from college information to information for school research reports. Students identified the internet as being "essential" to their lives. Greenhow concluded that even though we are labeling our youth as digital natives, there are still some critical internet evaluation skills that need to be taught to all students before they graduate to make sure the gap in between low and high income students does not broaden. The final results from a study of undergraduate students in 2009 by Arke and Primack made many suggestions for future media literacy studies. Their study primarily analyzed students ability to critically evaluate traditional forms of media. Their study suggested that improved measurement of media literacy will help advocates learn what challenges still remain for students. The researchers also made suggestions at the end of their study that there will need to be additional measurements of students media literacy skills with regards to Web 2.0 content. Their suggestions for future media literacy evaluation in 2009 is very similar to what I will be researching with my own students. A recent research project related to game based learning and internet skills by Admiraal (2015) demonstrated a gender effect in their results. The game was designed to evaluate students reflective internet skills. The questions in the game were based on the concept of digital judgement and included questions about students' ability to acquire, process and produce digital information. Of the 7th grade students who participated in the study, the boys significantly increased their scores between the pre test and the post test, while the female students only increased their scores slightly. In 2009 research related to a science inquiry task and undergraduate students ability to evaluate websites was conducted by Wiley et. al. This study consisted on providing students with the "top 6" google results for a search related to a volcanic eruption. Students only had access to those links the instructor provided. Some of the links were credible sources and others were not. The study also involved providing students with a "seek" instructional unit on evaluating web sources. The results supported prior research and that students do not seem to have a coherent understanding of how they should evaluate sources. 79% of the students responded that they had never received instruction in assessing the reliability of an internet source. Greenhow, C., Walker, J. D., Kim, S. (2009). Millennial Learners and Net-Savvy Teens? Examining Internet Use among Low-Income Students. Journal of Computing in Teacher Education, 26(2), 63-68. Arke, E. T., Primack, B. A. (2009). Quantifying Media Literacy: Development, Reliability, and Validity of a New Measure. Educational Media International. 44(1) 53-65. Admiraal, W. (2015). A Role-Play Game to Facilitate the Development of Students' Reflective Internet Skills. Educational Technology & Society. 18(3), 301-308. Wiley, J., Goldman, S. R., Graesser, A. C., Sanchez, C. A., Ash, I. K, Hemmerich, J. A. (2009). Source Evaluation, Comprehension, and Learning in Internet Science Inquiry Tasks. American Educational Research Association. 46(4) 1060-1106. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40284747
1 Comment
Jane Gallagher
11/13/2017 04:47:35 pm
The idea of gender affect on reflective internet skills is really interesting. I would speculate that males are playing more online computer games than females, but that might call for a study to confirm :) The difference is interesting and I wonder if you will make any observations or come up with any results that show any difference in male and female skills in your particular study.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2017
Categories |
Photo used under Creative Commons from wuestenigel