Jusletter IT

In 2010 the German Federal Minister on Labour and Social Affairs, Ursula von der Leyen, stated that in the next version of the Hartz IV payments cost for (computer) internet connections shall be included. This equals the Internet with TV or newspapers which are included in those payments as well. The main reason for this move is that every citizen in Germany should be able to get all the necessary information to join a democratic debate.

Based on Article20 of the German constitution, Germany is a social state, which means that everyone has to be treated equally, and everyone is allowed to join the democratic debate, even when not requested. In order to do so, being informed is an important issue. For a first step to make that possible, many countries force students by law to attend to school until a certain age. This requirement is an effort to make sure that every citizen is able to read and write, as well as earn a certain basic knowledge of other subjects. So the idea of the Federal Minister is to add another resource to that list of information basis, which can be used to get the most recent information on nearly any subject – the Internet. But as the use of the Internet is by far more complicated and broader than newspaper usage, a closer look seems to be necessary.

This article gives an overview on which further knowledge or competence is required for working with media and how this knowledge is gained. Furthermore, some ways to support those competences are shown.

Before talking about different media and the requirements for using them, it is necessary to point out what is actually meant by this term. The term «media» describes the bearing of information through different parties (Horn & Kerner, 1995) as well as organized communication-channels surrounded by institutionalized systems (Saxer, 1994).

When media is about bearing, and therefore sharing, information, the way a medium presents this information may make a difference. If you take a closer look in what you need to use different types of media, there is a line between them. For further accomplishment, we are not taking a closer look at the related and also important field of multi-media, even though most of the media we are talking about are described as multi-media by Mayer & Moreno (2003). In the last couple of years, the Internet seems to be everywhere. With smartphones and tablet PCs, sometimes the Internet is the only method of sharing information as there are no more USB slots, etc. available. So through these new Internet resources, we have the possibility of receiving all kinds of information, like newscasts, blogs, wiki etc. everywhere.

Before the Internet was one of the major resources for information, certain other media like newspaper and TV were used. In order to deal with those ways of communication, it is necessary to have certain prior knowledge, like being able to read and having further information about context in a cultural and/ or historical way.

These competences are especially important to understand, for example, the newspaper. While reading is a very basic function most people need every day for work or hobbies, the historical and cultural background is something particularly addressed through reading the newspaper. For example, some conflicts in the world, like in Israel or South Africa, are quite impossible to understand otherwise. To understand this background information, teaching history in addition to reading in schools is majorly important.

The same knowledge is important if someone wants to access information from the Internet. But based on the structure and technical background, it seems there are plenty more competences required. For example, media literacy and media competency are some competences discussed in research (e.g. Kellner & Share, 2007, Wecker, Kohnle & Fischer, 2007). The OECD decided that the termmedia competency contained the interaction in heterogeneous groups, with the independent use acting as well as the interactive use of different tools (Haase, 2006).

But even with those definitions, a lot of quite different things are implied by those terms. For Kellner & Share (2007), it is the active consuming and producing of media. But this means that there are far more aspects to take care of. For example, if someone searches for something on Google, how does he determine the right terms to yield the most appropriate results? Does industry or government bias the answers in the list – how can an individual even know if the information is biased?

In order to produce something on the Internet, there are even more things to consider. Different communities have different «rules» about how to place comments or what to talk about. The sharing of private information on social media could also be quite dangerous, especially for children and older people. So it is quite urgent that people take care of their privacy.

But beyond that, many researchers argue that Media Literacy, «skills, which users need in order to function effectively in digital environments» (Eshet-Alkalai, 2004, p. 93), is crucial for receiving information and learning. And if people cannot use nor have access to these media, it could lead to a digital divide (Attewell, 2001, Murdock, 2002, Wecker, Kohnle & Fischer, 2007). But it seems like, for learning, these fears are not necessarily true.

In a study conducted by Wecker, Kohnle & Fischer (2007) 37 students worked in pairs in a web-based Inquiry Environment to learn something about light. They were classified based on their procedural knowledge about the computer (did they know how to use it), their familiarity and their competence in using the computer. The results indicate that more computer literacy does not necessarily lead to better learning results. The authors explained in their findings that students with more media literacy «transfer less functional browsing behaviour accompanied by insufficient cognitive elaboration to inquiry learning» (Wecker, Kohnle & Fischer, 2007, p. 142).

It seems to be quite difficult to understand which competences are really necessary in order to work with the Internet. One way to get a better impression is by measuring the results of these different competences, for example, to support learning such as in the described study of Wecker, Kohnle & Fischer (2007).

But measurements for different kind of media competences seem to measure sometimes only certain aspects of what could be necessary for using media (Haase, 2006).

Even though the competences are needed in order to deal with information on the Internet, they are really difficult to define. As stated in the last segment, there is no doubt that they have to be learned in a formal or non-formal way. Based on Chomsky, it is important that what and how to learn are defined before defining competences (1973).

Creating a formal way of dealing with the acquirement of those competences in an institution, for example, in a school, would be one possibility to make children aware of some of the dangers of the Internet and showing them some ways to get and deal with the information overload of the Internet.

But it’s quite likely that, similar to other important things, which are learned in schools, this knowledge is not used and is referred to as inert knowledge (for more information see for example Renkl, 1996, Renkl, Mandl & Gruber, 1996).

One possible approach to deal with a lack of competences in an informal way and to acquire these is to use scripts. Similar to the theatre, a script is used to give a certain order structure of events (O’Donnell & Dansereau, 1992).

In current literature, scripts are used to divide tasks into subtasks and support learners with rules and instructions to guide them with a certain sequence through this task in order to enhance learning results on collaborative learning (Weinberger, Fischer & Mandl, 2003). Scripts are often used in collaborative learning research, for example, on argumentation (e.g. Stegmann, Wecker, Weinberger & Fischer, 2007; Weinberger, Ertl, Fischer & Mandl, 2005).

But there is also research on collaborative online searches indicating that script-using students have higher search competences as well as more domain specific knowledge (Wecker, Kollar, Fischer & Prechtl, 2007). Therefore 88 of 131 ninth grade students have been offered two different kinds of scripts (continuous and faded), to foster online searches as well as the domain-specific knowledge. The search competency has especially improved through the usage of scripts. These findings indicate that it is not only important but also quite helpful to support media competences, such as online-searches, by scripts. But other forms of support could also be fruitful.

The expression «Media will never influence learning» given by Clark (1994, p. 21) could be controversially discussed (see e.g. Kozma, 1994), but a similar statement seems possible for the Internet and educational justice. As long as there are well-educated people who get their information immediately from the Internet yet others who just check there for entertainment, the democratic debate can’t be expected to be lead as equal. Therefore, recent approaches of learning with technologies could be a chance for more educational justice, as it doesn’t just make it easier to get new information but also forces awareness.

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Vera Gehlen-Baum M.A.
Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter/Faculty Member
Universität des Saarlandes, Bildungswissenschaften, Educational Technology

http://edutech.uni-saarland.de/gehlen-baum
vera.gehlen-baum@mx.uni-saarland.de