learning with technology: the way we think in the ...

IADIS International Conference Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age (CELDA 2004)

LEARNING WITH TECHNOLOGY: THE WAY WE THINK IN THE DIGITAL ERA Yoram Eshet The Open University of Israel 108 Ravutski st. Raanana 43107, Israel

ABSTRACT Operating modern digital environments, as computer software and digital instruments require users to master a large variety of cognitive, motor, sociological, and emotional skills, in order to perform effectively with them. The tasks required in this context include, for example, “reading” instructions from graphical displays in user interfaces; utilizing digital reproduction to create new, meaningful materials from existing ones; constructing knowledge from a nonlinear, hypertextual navigation, evaluating the quality and validity of information; and have a mature and realistic understanding of the "rules" that prevail in the cyberspace. This newly emerging concept of digital literacy may be utilized as a measure of the quality of learners’ work in digital environments, and provide scholars and developers with a more effective means of communication in designing better user-oriented environments. The present paper suggests that, despite the large variety of existing digital environments, digital users employ "only" five major thinking skills, that are discussed in this paper: photo-visual skills, reproduction skills, branching skills, information skills, and socio-emotional skills. KEYWORDS

digital literacy; thinking skills; digital era.

1. INTRODUCTION The fast development in digital technologies during the digital era confront individuals with situations that require the utilization of an ever-growing assortment of technical, cognitive, and sociological skills that are necessary in order to perform and solve problems in digital environments. These skills have been termed in recent literature ‘digital literacy’ (Lenham, 1995; Papert, 1996; Gilster, 1997; Inoue, Naito and Koshizuka, 1997; Pool, 1997; Tapscott, 1998; Bruce and Payton, 1999; Davies, Szabo and Montgomerie, 2002; Swan, et al., 2002). But unlike the common attitude towards this term in most of these papers, digital literacy is more than just the technical ability to operate digital devices properly; it comprises a variety of cognitive skills that are utilized in executing tasks in digital environments, such as surfing the web, deciphering user interfaces, working with databases, and chatting in chat rooms. In fact, digital literacy has become a "survival skill" in the modern era: a key that helps users to work intuitively in executing complex digital tasks. In recent years, extensive efforts are made to describe and conceptualize the cognitive skills that users employ in digital environments (e.g. Burnett & McKinley, 1998; Wang et al, 2000; Zins, 2000; Cothey, 2002; Hargittai, 2002). Unfortunately, these efforts are usually local, focusing on a selected and limited variety of skills, mainly information-seeking skills (e.g. Marchionini, 1989; Zins, 2000), and, therefore, they do not cover the full scope of the term digital literacy. Eshet (2004) has established a holistic conceptual model for digital literacy, arguing that it covers most of the cognitive skills that users and scholars employ while working in digital environments and, therefore, providing researchers and designers of digital environments with a powerful framework and design guidelines. The feasibility of the model was examined by Eshet & Amichai-Haburger (in press), who tested the performance of different groups of computer users with tasks that require the utilization of different digital skills. The present paper describes the major cognitive skills that comprise digital literacy, discusses their value in refining our understanding of how people interact in their work with digital environments, and examines

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their application in improving communication among users, scholars and designers of digital environments. The digital thinking skills that are discussed in the paper are the photo-visual, reproduction, branching, information, and socio-emotional thinking skills. We suggest that these five digital thinking skills exist in every learner, but their "volume" or "magnitude" differ from person to person.

2. A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR DIGITAL SKILLS 2.1 Photo-visual digital skills The evolution of digital environments from text-based, syntactic to graphic-based semantic environments (Springer, 1987; Nielsen, 1993; Shneiderman, 1998), require users of modern digital environments to employ cognitive skills of “Using Vision to Think” (Tuft, 1990; Mullet et Sano, 1995) in order to create an effective photo-visual communication with the environment (Margono & Shneiderman, 1998; Nielsen, 1993). This unique form of digital thinking skill – the photo-visual skill – helps users to intuitively and freely ‘read’ and understand instructions and messages that are presented in a visual-graphical form. Good examples of digital environments that require the utilization of photo-visual digital skills can be found in the design of graphic user interfaces - GUI - (Shneiderman, 1998; Opperman, 2002) and in children’s modern computer games - in both, all usage instructions are provided through a graphical representation of symbols and icons. Successful photo-visual scholars usually have a good visual memory and strong intuitive-associative thinking that are useful in understanding visual messages. Eshet and Amichai-Hamburger (in press) discovered that young users (school children) of highly-graphic digital environments perform much better then adults in tasks that require the utilization of photo visual skills, as deciphering graphic user interfaces.

2.2 Reproduction Digital skills The modern digital technologies provide scholars with new possibilities for creating art and academic work by reproducing and editing existing texts, visuals and audio pieces (Benjamin, 1994; Gilster, 1997). Besides the ethical and philosophical questions regarding the limits and criteria for legitimacy and ingenuity of digital reproduction, the digital reproduction technologies require modern scholars to master a special assortment of cognitive skills, termed here ‘Reproduction digital skills. Reproduction digital skills are defined as the ability to create new meanings or new interpretations by combining preexisting, independent shreds of information in any form of media (text, graphic, or sound) (Gilster, 1997). These skills are essential in two major fields (Mason, 2002): In writing, where preexisting sentences can be reorganized and rearranged to create new meanings, and in art, where preexisting audio or visual pieces can be edited and manipulated in order to create new art works (as in the case of Pop Art and the case of the faked Internet artist Drako Maver, 1998: http://www.kapelica.org/maver/main.htm). Labbo et al. (1998) described problems that learners face in the digital reproduction of text in a variety of work situations. According to them, scholars who have a high level of digital reproduction skills also have a good, synthetic and multidimensional thinking that helps them in discovering new combinations for arranging information in new, meaningful ways. Opposite to their findings for the digital photo-visual skills, Eshet and Amichai-Hamburger (in press) found that adult scholars own a higher level of digital reproduction skills compared to younger school children, when performed with tasks that require the utilization of digital reproduction skills, as text re-arrangement.

2.3 Branching digital skills The non-linear, branching nature of the modern hypermedia technology introduced computer users to new dimensions of thinking that are necessary in order to make an educated use of this elaborate technology. In the past, the limited, non-hypermedia-based computer environments enhanced a more linear way of learning, that was dictated by the non-flexible operating systems, and by the fact that users were used to books and expected to work with digital environments in much the same way they read through books. The modern hypermedia environments, such as the Internet, multimedia environments, and digital databases, provide

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users with a high degree of freedom in navigating through knowledge domains, but at the same time, confront them with problems that involve the need to utilize non-linear and branching information-seeking strategies and to construct knowledge from independent shreds of information that were accessed in a nonorderly and non-linear way (Schank, 1984; Burnett & McKinley, 1998; Zins, 2000; Jansen & Pooch, 2001). Spiro et al. (1991) and Rouet and Levonen (1996) presented the Cognitive Flexibility Theory that described the importance of branching, multidimensional thinking skills in constructing meaningful understanding of complex phenomena. According to them, the hypermedia technology led to the evolution of new types of digital thinking skills, termed here ‘branching digital skills,’ or ‘Hypermedia skills.’ Branching digital skills require scholars to have a good spatial-multidimensional sense of orientation - the ability to stay oriented and avoid getting lost in the hyperspace while navigating through complex knowledge domains, despite the intricate navigation paths they may take (Horton, 2000; Piacciano, 2001; Daniels et al., 2002; Lazar et al., 2003). As shown by Lee and Hsu (2002), they also have a good metaphoric thinking and the ability to create mental models, concept maps, and other forms of abstract representation of the web’s structure, which help branching-skilled scholars to overcome disorientation problems in hypermedia environments. Eshet and Amichai-Hamburger (in press) report on the superiority of young users in executing tasks in the Internet, tasks that involve the utilization of branching digital thinking skills.

2.4 Information digital skills Today, with the exponential growth in available information, the consumers’ ability to assess information by sorting out subjective, biased or even false information has become a key issue in training people to become smart information consumers (Kerka, 1999; Salomon, 2000; Rimor & Giveon, 2001). Information assessment is made in almost every work we do in digital environments, such as in data queries or in navigational decisions we make in the web. It is the awareness of the users to decisions they make, that determines the actual quality of the conclusions, positions, opinions, or models that they construct from the information. The ability of information consumers to make educated, smart information assessment requires a special kind of thinking skills, termed here ‘Information digital skills’. Information skills act as a filter: They help identify false, irrelevant, or biased information, and avoid its penetration into the learner’s cognition. Skilled information consumers are critical thinkers - people who always question information and never take it for granted (Rimor & Giveon, 2001; Mardis, 2002). Eshet and Amichai-Hamburger (in press) found that adults performed much better then children in exercising digital information skills, when asked to analyze news in Internet news sites. It is true that information thinking skills are not unique to the digital era; they were always crucial traits of successful scholars, even before the information revolution. However, in the digital era, with the unlimited exposure of humans to digital information, these skills have become real "survival skills", that enable learners to make educated uses of information. Unfortunately, most studies of information digital skills focus on the information search strategies and habits of users (e.g. Dresang, 1999; Morahan-Martin & Anderson, 2000; Zins, 2000), and only a few stress the cognitive and pedagogical aspects that are relevant to these skills (e.g. Burnett & McKinley, 1998; Minkel, 2000; O’Sullivan, 2000; Salomon, 2000).

2.5 Socio-emotional digital skills The expansion of the Internet and other platforms of digital communication have opened new dimensions and opportunities for learning through knowledge-sharing groups, discussion groups, knowledge communities, chat rooms, and many other forms of collaborative learning (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1996; Dickinson, 2002; Ardichvilli et al., 2003). But these new opportunities face users with challenges that require them to employ sociological and emotional skills in order to "understand the rules of the game" and “survive” the hurdles that await them in the mass communication that takes place in the cyberspace (Wallace, 1999; Utz, 2000). Such challenges include not only the ability to share formal knowledge, but also to share emotions in digital communication, to identify pretentious people in chat rooms and to avoid Internet traps as a hoax and malicious Internet viruses. These require users to own a relatively new assortment of digital skills, termed ‘Socio-emotional skills’ in the present paper, because they involve primarily emotional and sociological aspects of working in the cyberspace. Among all the types of digital thinking skills described here, the socioemotional skills are probably the newest and most complex; they emerged only in the last decades, with the

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exponential spread of Internet communication, and they require users who are very critical and analytical, very mature, and have a good command of information, branching, and photo-visual digital thinking skills. In recent years, efforts are made to portray the sociological and psychological profile of the skilled cyberspace user (e.g. Hamburger & Ben-Artzi 2000; Utz, 2000; Amichai-Hamburger, 2002; Mundrof & Laird, 2002). From the results of these studies, we can describe the socio-emotional-skilled users of digital environments as people who are willing to share their own data and knowledge with others (McLure et al, 2000; Ardichvilli et al., 2003), capable of evaluating data, possessing an abstract thinking, and able to design knowledge through virtual collaboration. No clear empirical trends are evident in analyzing the performance of users with tasks that require the utilization of socio-emotional digital skills (Eshet & Amichai-Hamburger, in press), indicating the emerging and yet unclear nature of this new and complex skill, and suggesting that its use is still not well established among users of the modern communication digital platforms.

3. CONCLUSION The present paper proposes a conceptual framework that refines the term digital literacy, into thinking skills that should be mastered by present-day effective users of digital environments. By employing these types of digital skills, users can improve their performance and “survive” the large variety of obstacles and stumbling blocks that lie in the way in the digital world. The proposed conceptual framework provides scholars and developers of digital environments with a powerful tool that improves our understanding of the skills that people employ in digital environments, and enable developing better user-centered working environments.

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