THE MAGIC OF WIKIPEDIAA Study of College Students’ Uses of the Internet for Academic Purposes

NADIA M. ANDAYANI, MA

Department of Communication

Universitas Indonesia

nadia.andayani@yahoo.com

Internet users are predominated by young people with up to 80% active users (Nielsen, 2011)

INDONESIA

The on-going Palapa Ring project targets to have 85% of the country area covered by broadband internet access by the end of 2014 (Ministry of Communication & Information, 2012)

#1#2#3 Lack of attention in improving human resources to adapt with

the technology, particularly for young people as they are assumed as techno-savvy users.

presentation agenda

123

background

theoretical framework

methodology

456

findings

summary

future work

1 backgroundPREVIOUS ACADEMIC STUDIES

• New definition of digital divide

• Majority of research conducted in well developed countries

• Limited studies in Indonesia. The existing ones focus on

adults, education/government staff and librarians.

2 theoretical framework

ACTIVE AUDIENCE: Audience actively constructs meaning as they interact with text. Expert user use a range of strategic cognitive processes to select, organize, connect, and evaluate what they read in online environment (Coiro & Dobler, 2007)

INTERNET LITERACY: Related to how users could get benefits from their online activities. This study employs the categorization from van Deursen & van Dijk (2009) to illustrate the range of internet literacy, as follow: (1) operational internet skills (2) formal internet skills (3) information internet skills (4) strategic internet skills.

3 methodologyCONSIDERATIONS FOR PARTICIPATION

• Four university students from 4 different universities in

Greater Jakarta area to illustrate different demographic &

lifestyles

• 2 Female, 2 Male

METHOD: IN-DEPTH INTERVIEWS

3 methodologyInformant 1 - RA, female, 20 y/o, SES B

• Final year student in a private university. Shows moderate understanding on technical skills and very low level of content-related skills.

• Mostly influenced by friends and not encouraged by parents to use the internet. Lecturers did support but did not guide the activities.

3 methodologyInformant 2 - SK, female, 18 y/o, SES A

• 2nd year student in a private university. Shows high level on technical skills and low level of content-related skills.

• Mostly influenced by friends (and online social networks) and also encouraged by parents to use the internet. Lecturers did support but did not guide the activities.

3 methodologyInformant 3 - DA, male, 21 y/o, SES A

• First year student in a private university. Shows high level of understanding on technical skills and very low level of content-related skills.

• Mostly influenced by friends and not encouraged by parents to use the internet. Lecturers supported but did not guide the activities.

3 methodologyInformant 4 - CN, male, 20 y/o, SES B

• Second year student in a state university. Shows moderate understanding on technical skills and also moderate level of content-related skills.

• Mostly influenced by friends and not encouraged by parents to use the internet. Lecturers did support but did not guide the activities.

4 findingsInternet Skills

• The findings show that all informants possess moderate to advanced level of technical skills. However, if it is compared to content-related skills, all informant demonstrate lower level of capabilities, for instance: judging quality of the resources.

• One of the informants argued that all contents in the internet must be truthful and thus, can be used as academic resources.

• Another informant stated that Wikipedia is the only ‘academic resources he is aware of.

• All informants could not differentiate and not knowing what academic resources mean.

4 findingsInfluence on Academic Lives

• All informants agree that internet has major contribution for their academic lives, however, it is related on how it makes them easier to complete tasks/assignments, but it is not necessarily improving the quality of the assignments.

• All informants agree that internet made them easier to cheat, particularly when they were on deadlines. The most common way is copy and paste from Wikipedia/blogs.

4 findingsInfluencer

• All informants agree that peer-groups are the most influential party in their online activities.

• Parents are also influential, particularly related to access to the technology, as in providing PC/laptops and subscribed to internet services at home

• Lecturers only contribute limited part to the online behaviour

5 summary• Young people are indeed more familiar with the internet.

But, apparently, it does not mean that they could take advantages from their online activities.

• In the context of education, supports from lecturers/adults are needed to guide these students, particularly on improving their content-related skills.

• In order to improve the skills, participation from education institution are also needed.

• Language barrier is one of the issues that also needs attention since most of the contents on the internet is in English and other languages.

6 future work

• Studies on internet literacy should be expanded into other segments of society.

• Expand the criteria of informants to provide more insightful findings as informants in this research are coming from similar socio-economic status and geographic location.

Thank You

Q&A