Evaluation of Student Facing Web-Based Services: Final Integrated Report (Nielsen/NetRatings)

Comparitive Advantage

The anonymity of the Internet, as well as the means by which it can facilitate interaction and communication, particularly across a diverse range of locations, are important benefits to promote learning among children and young people. The Studyit forums are uniquely positioned to provide NCEA students with access to teachers and other students across New Zealand, to respond not only to study-related questions but also providing a forum for general communication with peers.  These features allow children and young people to build confidence in their own abilities and take learning at their own pace.

As mentioned previously, the ability to easily self-publish is also a unique method of expressing oneself and of contribution. Through no other medium in the past has this been possible and young people across the world are flocking to sites such as YouTube, MySpace and Flickr to network with others and share information about themselves and their lives.

The Any Questions online reference service offers immediate assistance to any student with Internet access across New Zealand – another unique form of learning facilitated online. The concept of teaching information literacy in this manner is challenging without face to face contact, but is also the only service of its kind, catering to a geographically diverse range of New Zealand children and young people. Such learning is intended to equip them to safely and effectively make use of the plethora of online tools now available to them.

Alignment with the NZ Curriculum and Effective Teaching

While not explored in detail, there is some evidence that clear links to the curriculum can drive value and satisfaction with online services. This was particularly true among users of Studyit who appreciated the site’s relevance and link with NCEA assessment.

Surprisingly, there was less than anticipated use of the content on the WickED website which is specifically tied to the curriculum (‘Themes’). It is therefore important to ensure widespread communication to teachers, improving their awareness of the resources on offer on websites like WickED. Content that is specifically packaged to be used in class or to help teachers prepare for lessons would likely be highly appreciated and encourage high levels of use. The challenge lies in the effective promotion of such resources and ensuring that their format and content caters to teachers’ requirements.

Alignment with Practices of Schools and Other Providers

The point raised above – effective promotion of web based services to stimulate greater use among teachers – may require a step further than simply building awareness.  Teachers, administrators, school librarians and also, policy makers, may need to shift current practices toward the online environment as more and more learning and teaching resources become available through the medium. This may require a change in perception as well as behaviour, through providing education and communications to clearly state the available online resources and their value to children and young people. It is likely to take some time to evolve long held perceptions and behaviours which focus on the use of traditional tools like books. The conduct and communication of further research to prove the effectiveness of various web based services could be valuable in shifting perceptions and behaviours over time.  

Support of the Organizational Objectives of the Various Project Partners

Each of the services is contributing toward the project partners’ broad objectives of providing web based learning tools to be used by children and young people across New Zealand. Among users, satisfaction has been found to be fair in the case of WickED and Any Questions, and higher among users of Studyit but overall, each of the services is providing value to the current user audience as a readily available tool which facilitates children and young people’s development – whether through informal or formal contexts.

An important challenge lies not only in encouraging a greater cross section of children and young people to trial the services, but also to stimulate more repeat and regular use among the existing user base. A large proportion of users of WickED and Studyit were found to have used only a small number of the applications and content areas on offer through the site; for example, only one in three users of Studyit had visited the online forums and less than one in ten WickED users had done so. Encouraging more users to the Studyit forums, and more repeat visitation, is key to the service’s objectives of providing a means for NCEA students to communicate and interact with their peers and with teachers.

With specific regard to WickED’s objectives, the site’s original intent was to support learning in after- school centers. It was found that only 7% of users had ever accessed the site from such a center with the majority of site use being at school, during a class, or at home. This finding may call for a new communications and education campaign aimed at after school-center staff in an effort to encourage more use from this audience.

As already mentioned, there could also be much greater visitation of the ‘Themes’ content on the WickED site, which is developed and maintained to relate specifically to the curriculum as an aid for teachers. Greater awareness and encouragement to use WickED and the ‘Themes’ content would likely result in better utilisation of these resources, in line with the site’s original intent.

In relation to Any Questions, it was found that it is difficult to teach and engage students in the learning of information literacy during a brief online ‘interlude’, creating a challenge for site managers to overcome through programs such as operator training. Technical barriers are also evident, which limit the ability of those on slower Internet connections to easily connect to operators and access functions like co-browsing, which would enhance users’ learning. The low penetration of broadband Internet across New Zealand continues to hamper the degree to which the Any Questions service can operate to its full capacity and, in turn, fully meet its objectives in teaching information literacy.

Unanticipated Benefits Or Issues For Teachers, Librarians, Schools, Project Partners

It is interesting to note that, in some cases, ‘lower achievers’ (ie those faring less well at school) were found to be obtaining just as much value from web based resources as their higher achieving counterparts. While it remains a challenge to stimulate use among less engaged and less pro active students, particularly those attending lower decile schools and without home Internet access, it is comforting that such students will benefit from using the services once introduced to them.

As has been a recurrent theme through this report, building awareness, and other campaigns aimed at driving use and recommendation among teachers, as well as parents, will be important factors in the success of web based education services going forward. Outside the hands of education policy makers, project partners and educators is the greater challenge of attempting to equip all of New Zealand’s children and young people with ready (personal) access to the Internet. This would give them the opportunity to explore all of the online content and applications now available, which can enhance their learning and development in ways that other mediums simply can not facilitate. The affordability of Internet access in the home appears to be an issue creating a divide between those from varied socio economic backgrounds, in their access to learning and development tools.

Alignment With Young People’s Preferences For Their Learning

New Zealand children and young people are calling on a variety of resources to support their studies, with a large number particularly citing online search engines such as Google as a typical first step for any research. This audience has rapidly adopted the online medium for a wide host of their activities – school-related and otherwise – and incorporating these tools into their formal learning environments is a great complement to the method by which they are now comfortable and confident communicating and seeking information.

Most notably the Studyit forums and the Any Questions online reference service align with young people’s preference for communication (ie, communicating online through messaging and message board systems) and, in turn, their learning of social skills and the ability to relate to others. Among the Studyit user base, older teens (aged 16 to 19) were found to be four times more likely to use the forums than their younger counterparts and the collaborative and communication elements of the site were found to elicit the highest levels of satisfaction. The challenge ahead is to build regular use of the forums amongst a range of students, particularly those faring less well academically and without ready-access to the Internet (ie, at home).

A Change In How Young People Access And Manage Their Learning

Evidence gathered among the children and young people who are currently making use of WickED, Studyit and / or Any Questions definitely reveals a change in the way children and young people access and manage their learning.  It is clear that young users appreciate the new found forms of independent and ‘always on’ learning and study tools facilitated by web based services, and their availability from home increases the convenience and likelihood of accessing them. Never before have so many New Zealand students had such a plethora of education and learning resources at their finger tips.

However, this leads to the important comment that not all children and young people are in the privileged situation of having such ready access to web based tools and the user base of all three services evaluated was found to be skewed toward those with home Internet access (Studyit and Any Questions to a greater extent than WickED). It will be important to put strategies in place that attempt to create equality in access to information and learning tools for those without home Internet access. Whilst difficult, considerations could include an increased allowance of unstructured but supervised Internet use during school time, during which students would be encouraged to log onto services like Any Questions, Studyit or WickED