Doctoral Defense for the Information and Interaction Design Program at the University of Baltimore. Topic was "Examining how academic discipline and demographics affect the web-use skills of graduate and professional students"
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Doctoral Defense
1. JENNY OWENS’ PRESENTS
Examining how academic
discipline and demographics
affect the web-use skills of
graduate and professional students
DISSERTATION DEFENSE
Information & Interaction Design
University of Baltimore
April 28, 2015
2. Kathryn Summers, Ph.D.
Roger Ward, Ed.D, J.D., MPA
Greg Walsh, Ph.D.
Deborah Kohl, Ph.D.
Flavius Lilly, Ph.D.
Nick Owens, M.S.
SPECIAL THANKS
6. STATEMENT OF
THE PROBLEM
• Concept of digital natives has recently been refuted empirically and
theoretically 1, 2
• Argument criticized for neglecting to study race and socioeconomic
factors 3
• Instead digital natives have been found to possess a large variation of
technical ability 4
• Lack of research on the digital literacy of graduate and professional
students
• Educational differences between graduate & undergraduate students5, 6, 7
• Among academic disciplines there are varying degrees of technology use
8, 9, 10, 11
1 Jones & Shao, 2011; 2 Bennett, Maton, & Kervin, 2008; 3 Vaidhyanathan, 2008; 4 Kennedy et al., 2007; 5 Hussey & Smith, 2010; 6 Artino & Stephens,
2009; 7 Seligman, 2012; 8 Weng & Ling, 2007; 9 Fry, 2004; 10 Fry, 2006; 11 Guidry & BrckaLorenz, 2010
7. SIGNIFICANCE OF
THE STUDY
• Contribute new knowledge
• Determine if academic discipline, and other demographics are associated
with varying levels of web-use skills
• Aligns with evolving core competencies of student learning outcome
frameworks (CAS, ACPA, NASPA)
• Potentially can contribute to creating initiatives that address digital
literacy and inequality
9. DEFINITIONS
DIGITAL LITERACY
digital competence
information literacy
computer literacy
communication literacy
e-literacy
network literacy
informancy
ICT literacy
multimedia literacy
media literacy
mediacy
technology literacy
visual literacy
web-oriented digital literacy
10. ASSESSMENT OF
DIGITAL LITERACY
iSkills by ETS
12
Calvani’s Digital Competency
13
Hargittai’s Web-use Index
14, 15
12 Educational Testing Service (ETS), 2014 ; 13 Calvani et al, 2009; 14 Hargittai, 2005; 15 Hargittai & Hsieh, 2012
11. STUDENTS VARYING
SKILLS AND USE
16 Kennedy et al., 2010; 17 Ferri et al., 2008; 18 Hargittai, 2010; 19 He & Freeman, 2010; 20 Hargittai & Hinnant, 2008
• Varying skill levels
16, 17
• Influenced by socioeconomic
and demographic factors
18, 19, 20
12. FACTORS THAT AFFECT DIGITAL LITERACY
Variable
Affects
undergrads?
Affects
graduate students?
Notable citations
Age + Unexamined Jones & Shao, 2011; Bennett, Maton, & Kervin, 2008
GPA Unexamined Unexamined
Self-efficacy + Unexamined
He & Freeman, 2010; Sherman et al., 2000; Zhang,
2002; Slate et al., 2002
Gender +++ Unexamined
Hargittai, 2010, Slate et al., 2002; Madigan,
Goodfellow, & Stone, 2007
Race/Ethnicity +++ Unexamined
Hargittai, 2010; Hargittai & Hinnant, 2008; Sexton,
Hignite, Margavio, & Margavio, 2009; Jackson et al.,
2008;
International Status Unexamined Unexamined
Academic Discipline Unexamined Unexamined
Parental education +++ Unexamined
Hargittai, 2010; Mominó, Sigalés, & Meneses, 2008
+++ consistent evidence from multiple studies or a meta analysis; ++ evidence from several studies or strong association in high quality study; +
evidence from a single study or multiple low quality studies; - evidence for no association
14. RESEARCH QUESTIONS
AND AIMS
The primary purpose of this study was to examine whether
academic discipline was associated with web-use skills
among the graduate and professional students at the
University of Maryland, Baltimore.
The secondary purpose of this study was to examine how
age, gender, race, parental education, international status,
GPA, and self-perceived skills affect web-use skills.
15. INSTRUMENT
Hargittai and Hsieh’s Web-use Index was modified as the
instrument for this study (2012). The instrument has been
found to be a proxy of participants’ observed web-use skills
(Hargittai, 2005).
The study was found to be IRB EXEMPT at both UMB and UB.
18. DATA AND STUDY
SAMPLE
The Web-use Index was distributed online via a survey to
the entire population of 4,996 potential participants at
UMB.
Participants had two weeks to take the survey, from
September 17 – October 1, 2014.
Students from the Graduate School (n=50) and
undergraduates (n=99) were excluded.
Total participants in the survey = 515
19. ANALYTICAL
APPROACH
Power Analysis
To determine needed sample size
Descriptive Statistics
Proc FREQ for frequency tables and chi square to determine
unadjusted statistical significance
Kruskal-Wallis H
Non-parametric rank sums of dependent variables. Tested if there
was statistical significance between dependent and independent
variables
The Fisher’s LSD
Post hoc analysis to determine statistical differences between sub-
groupings of independent variables
21. ACADEMIC DISCIPLINE
AND WEB-USE SKILLS
Graph of average rank sum
of variables with statistically
significant differences (p<0.01)
160 180 200 220 240 260 280 300 320 340
Phishing
Preference Setting
Reload
RSS
Tabbed Browsing
Tagging
Torrent
Web feeds
Wiki
Dental n=50
Law n=78
Medicine n=117
Nursing n=72
Pharmacy n=67
Social Work n=131
x2
= 25.67
x2
= 16.25
x2
= 24.11
x2
= 27.35
x2
=24.07
x2
= 15.57
x2
= 60.47
x2
= 15.53
x2
= 24.05
22. RACE AND
WEB-USE SKILLS
180 230 280 330 380
Bookmarklet
Cache
Frames
Phishing
RSS
Social Bookmarking
Torrent
Web log
Widget
Wiki
Asian/Pacific Islander
Black/African American
Hispanic
White/Caucasian
Other
Graph of average rank sum
of variables with statistically
significant differences (p<0.01)
x2
= 13.81
x2
= 15.81
x2
= 20.02
x2
= 20.02
x2
= 24.10
x2
= 16.65
x2
= 33.50
x2
= 18.86
x2
= 14.40
x2
= 14.88
23. GENDER AND
WEB-USE SKILLS
Graph of average rank sum
of variables with statistically
significant differences (p<0.01)
220 240 260 280 300 320 340
Cache
Firewall
Frames
JPG
Malware
Newsgroup
Phishing
Podcasting
Preference Setting
Reload
RSS
Spyware
Tabbed Browsing
Torrent
Web feeds
Web log
Widget
Wiki
Male n=117
Female n=398
24. AGE AND
WEB-USE SKILLS
Graph of average rank sum
of variables with statistically
significant differences (p<0.01)
40 60 80 100
Tabbed Browsing
Tagging
Torrent
< 22
22 - 24
25 - 28
29 - 40
> 40
x2
= 22.28
x2
= 16.12
x2
= 30.90
25. GPA AND
WEB-USE SKILLS
130 140 150 160 170 180
Social Bookmarking
> 3.7
3.3 - 3.7
< 3.3
Graph of average rank sum
of variables with statistically
significant differences (p<0.01)
x2
= 13.65
26. 80 130 180 230 280 330 380
Advanced Search
Bcc (on email)
Blog
Bookmark
Bookmarklet
Cache
Favorites
Firewall
Frames
JPG
Malware
Newsgroup
PDF
Phishing
Podcasting
Preference Setting
Reload
RSS
Social Bookmarking
Spyware
Tabbed Browsing
Tagging
Torrent
Web feeds
Web log
Widget
Wiki
Not very skilled (n=14)
Fairly Skilled (n=216)
Very Skilled (n = 252)
Expert (n=33)
SELF-PERCEIVED INTERNET SKILLS AND WEB-USE SKILLS
Graph of average
rank sum of variables
with statistically
significant differences
(p<0.01)
27. VARIABLES WITH NO STATISTICALLY
SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES
The results showed no
statistically significant differences
(p < 0.01) for International Status
or Parental Education.
29. DISCUSSION | ACADEMIC DISCIPLINE
• Differences between academic disciplines 21, 22
• Varying uses of technology 23, 24
• Also differences in technology acceptance 25
and risk perception of
technology 26
• Self select due to different strengths, abilities or cultural preferences
21 Becher, 1989; 22 Becher & Troweler, 2001; 23 Weng & Ling, 2007; 24 Guidry & BrckaLorenz, 2010; 25 Orji, 2010; 26 Weisenfeld & Ott, 2010
30. DISCUSSION | RACE/ETHNICITY
• The findings that Asian/Pacific Islander students had the highest web-use
skills and Hispanic students had the lowest support other research 27
• In the literature, African American students report knowing less about
the Internet28
and have scored lower on tests measuring information and
digital literacy 29, 30, 31
• Possible reasons for this finding could be that African American
students in graduate school may have a higher socioeconomic status,
higher quality of schooling, more parental support, or a better school
environment
• Since participants of the study are already in graduate or professional
school, the effect of the socioeconomic advantage or disadvantage of
their race on web-use skills may be offset
27 Hargittai and Hinnant, 2008; 28 Hargittai, 2010; 29 Sexton, Hignite, Margavio, & Margavio, 2009; 30 Jackson et al., 2008; 31 Ritzhaupt, Feng, Daw-
son, & Barron, 2013
31. DISCUSSION | GENDER
• Family environment can reinforce gender stereotypes related to Internet
use 32
• Men have been found to have more positive attitudes towards the
Internet than women 33, 34, 35
• Women have less computer knowledge and fewer experiences 36
• Men are also more likely to have more technology classes in school, more
computers in the home in which they grew up, and a personal computer
in their own room 37
32 McMillian & Morrison, 2006; 33 Sherman et al., 2000; 34 Slate et al., 2002; 35 Zhang, 2002; 36 He & Freeman, 2010; 37 Correa, 2010
32. DISCUSSION | PARENTAL EDUCATION
• Differs from prior research done with undergraduates 38
• Highly educated keep up with advancements in technology 39
• More education is characterized by higher levels of computer ownership,
spending more time online, and more availability of Internet access 40
• Perhaps since participants of the study are already in graduate or
professional school, the effect of the socioeconomic advantage of their
parents’ education on web-use skills is offset
38 Hargittai, 2010; 39 Golden & Katz, 2008; 40 DiMaggio et al., 2004
33. DISCUSSION
AGE
These variables represent the newest waves of technology
GPA
Social bookmarking had an inverse relationship
INTERNATIONAL STATUS
Difficult to evaluate due to low sample size
34. IMPLICATIONS
• The conversation surrounding the effect of gender and race is important
in the context of digital inequality
• Those who are more privileged are positioned to benefit more from the
medium than those who are less privileged
• Neglecting to address this gap in digital literacy between different
genders and races may deepen secondary digital divides
• Online abilities are related to future socioeconomic status 41, 42, 43
• Not addressing these concerns has the potential to contribute to
inequality
41 Hargittai, 2002; 42 Hargittai & Hinnant, 2008; 43 Hargittai & Walejko, 2008
35. RECOMMENDATIONS
Skills/Extent, Quality & Autonomy of Use
• Evaluate students’ digital literacy skills upon or before entering graduate
school
• Develop more affordable and accessible assessment tools
• Evaluate the digital literacy of faculty and staff upon joining the university
and provide them with on-going support and training as needed
• Curriculum or co-curriculum that addresses general technological
competence
36. RECOMMENDATIONS
Availability of Social Support
• Portray those who work in technology driven fields differently so that
diverse and underrepresented groups can see themselves working and
engaging with technology
• Advocate for programs that support young women’s engagement and
competency with technology
• Addressing Internet anxiety through role modeling or education
• Faculty and staff that are engaged with technology should actively
mentor students and/or their peers. This can be done informally
through impromptu trainings or formally through an organized series of
professional development opportunities
37. STRENGTHS AND
LIMITATIONS
STRENGTHS
Previous research has not examined the digital literacy of graduate students
LIMITATIONS
May not be generalizable to non-graduate populations or even graduate
and professional students that do not attend UMB
Indirect vs. Direct assessment
38. SUMMARY OF
FINDINGS
• For Academic discipline, nine of the twenty-seven variables were
statistically significantly different. It appears the School of Law scored
highest and the School of Nursing scored lowest.
• For Race/ethnicity ten of the twenty-seven variables were statistically
significantly different. It appears that Asian/Pacific Islander participants
scored highest and Hispanic participants scored lowest.
• For Gender eighteen of the twenty-seven variables were statistically
significantly different. It appears that male participants outscored female
participants on every variable.
• Age was statistically significant for three and GPA was only statistically
significant for one of the twenty-seven variables.
• The results showed no statistical significance for International Status or
Parental Education.
39. NEXT STEPS
PUBLISH FINDINGS
FUTURE RESEARCH
• Investigate how differing cultures and ICT use affects digital literacy
among academic disciplines.
• Examine attitudes and perceptions as they relate to technology use and
gender of graduate and professional students.
• Investigate the digital literacy of African American graduate and
professional students to uncover why it deviates from the traditional
academic achievement gap.
• Investigate how types of Internet use affect potential gains in human,
financial, and social capital.
41. Dependent Variable Definition
Advanced search
A feature offered by most search engines and search tools on the Web. Advanced search gives the Web searcher the ability to narrow
their searches by a series of different filters; i.e., language, proximity, domain, etc.
Bcc (on email)
Short for blind carbon copy, a copy of an e-mail message sent to a recipient without the recipient's address appearing in the message.
This is useful if you want to copy a message to many people without each of them seeing who the other recipients are.
Blog
A website containing a writer's or group of writers' own experiences, observations, opinions, etc., and often having images and links to
other websites.
Bookmark
To mark a document or a specific place in a document for later retrieval. Nearly all Web browsers support a bookmarking feature that
lets you save the URL of a Web page so that you can easily re-visit the page at a later time.
Bookmarklet
A direct link to a specific function or feature within a Web page. While a browser bookmark takes you to a specific page, the bookmar-
klet will take you to a function, such as a specific search (including the search phrase) on a Web page, a tagged location on Google
maps and others.
Cache
Pronounced cash, a special high-speed storage mechanism. It can be either a reserved section of main memory or an independent
high-speed storage device. Two types of caching are commonly used in personal computers: memory caching and disk caching.
Favorites
Nearly all Web browsers support this feature that lets you save the address (URL) of a Web page so that you can easily re-visit the page
at a later time. Synonymous with bookmark.
Fitibly A fake variable, this term is not real.
Firewall
Firewall systems prevent unauthorized access to or from a private network. Firewalls can be implemented in both hardware and soft-
ware, or both.
Frames
A feature supported by most modern Web browsers than enables the Web author to divide the browser display area into two or more
sections (frames).
JFW A fake variable, this term is not real.
JPG
Pronounced jay-peg, JPEG is a lossy compression technique for color images. Although it can reduce files sizes to about 5% of their nor-
mal size, some detail is lost in the compression.
Malware Short for malicious software, malware is software designed specifically to damage or disrupt a system, such as a virus or a Trojan horse.
Newsgroup Same as forum, an online discussion group. On the Internet, there are thousands of newsgroups covering every conceivable interest.
PDF
Short for Portable Document Format, a PDF is a file format developed by Adobe Systems. PDF captures formatting information from
a variety of desktop publishing applications, making it possible to send formatted documents and have them appear on the recipient's
monitor or printer as they were intended.
APPENDIX A
42. Phishing
An email that falsely claims to be a legitimate enterprise in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information to be
used for identity theft.
Podcasting
Podcasting is similar in nature to RSS, which allows subscribers to subscribe to a set of feeds to view syndicated website content. With
podcasting however, you have a set of subscriptions that are checked regularly for updates and instead of reading the feeds on your
computer screen, you listen to the new content on your iPod (or like device).
Preference setting
Preference setting is changing your profile preferences to adapt the user options for browsing, editing, searching and notifications to
your needs.
Proxypod A fake variable, this term is not real.
Reload
Generally, to update something with new data. For example, some Web browsers include a reload button that updates the currently
displayed Web pages. This feature is also called refresh.
RSS
RSS is the acronym used to describe the de facto standard for the syndication of Web content. RSS is an XML-based format and while it
can be used in different ways for content distribution, its most widespread usage is in distributing news headlines on the Web. A Web-
site that wants to allow other sites to publish some of its content creates an RSS document and registers the document with an RSS
publisher. A user that can read RSS-distributed content can use the content on a different site.
Social Bookmarking
Commonly used in blogs, site authors attach keyword descriptions (called tags) to identify images or text within their site as a catego-
ries or topic. Web pages and blogs with identical tags can then be linked together allowing users to search for similar or related content.
If the tags are made public, online pages that act as a Web-based bookmark service are able to index them. tags can be created using
words, acronyms or numbers. Tags are also called tagging, blog tagging, or folksonomies (short for folks and taxonomy).
Spyware
Software that covertly gathers user information through the user's Internet connection without his or her knowledge, usually for adver-
tising purposes.
Tabbed Browsing
Tabbed browsing is a function of some Web browsers that allow uses to surf and view multiple pages by loading the Web sites into
"tabbed" sections of one page, rather than multiple pages.
Tagging
Commonly used in blogs, site authors attach keyword descriptions (called tags) to identify images or text within their site as a catego-
ries or topic. Web pages and blogs with identical tags can then be linked together allowing users to search for similar or related content.
If the tags are made public, online pages that act as a Web-based bookmark service are able to index them.Webopedia.com
43. Dental
(n=50)
Law
(n=78)
Medicine
(n=117)
Nursing
(n=72)
Pharmacy
(n=67)
Social Work
(n=131)
Total
(n=515)
Male 20 (40.0%) 26 (33.3%) 37 (31.6%) 4 (5.6%) 18 (26.9%) 12 (9.2%) 117 (23%)
Female 30 (60.0%) 52 (67.7%) 80 (68.4%) 68 (94.4%) 49 (73.1%) 119 (90.8%) 398 (77%)
Asian/Pacific Islander 18 (36.0%) 13 (16.7%) 25 (21.4%) 3 (4.2%) 29 (43.3%) 5 (3.8%) 93 (18.1%)
Black/African American 3 (6.0%) 14 (18.0%) 3 (2.6%) 11 (15.3%) 6 (9.0%) 23 (17.6%) 60 (11.7%)
Hispanic 4 (8.0%) 5 (6.4%) 3 (2.6%) 6 (8.3%) 1 (1.5%) 5 (3.8%) 24 (4.7%)
White/Caucasian 24 (48.0%) 46 (59.0%) 82 (70.1%) 52 (72.2%) 29 (43.3%) 95 (72.5%) 328 (63.7%)
Other 1 (2.0%) 0 (0.0%) 4 (3.4%) 0 (0.0%) 2 (3.0%) 3 (2.3%) 10 (1.9%)
International Student 3 (6.0%) 1 (1.3%) 1 (0.9%) 0 (0.0%) 8 (11.9%) 1 (0.8%) 14 (2.7%)
Not International 47 (94.0%) 77 (98.7%) 116 (99.1%) 72 (100.0%) 59 (88.1%) 130 (99.2%) 501 (97.3%)
< 22 years 1 (2.0%) 2 (2.6%) 5 (4.3%) 1 (1.4%) 9 (13.4%) 5 (3.8%) 23 (4.5%)
22 - 24 years 20 (40.0%) 37 (47.4%) 47 (40.2%) 7 (9.7%) 25 (37.3%) 41 (31.3%) 117 (34.4%)
25 - 28 years 25 (50.0%) 32 (41.0%) 49 (41.9%) 22 (30.6%) 23 (34.3%) 40 (30.5%) 191 (37.1%)
29 - 40 years 4 (8.0%) 6 (7.7%) 15 (12.8%) 22 (30.6%) 5 (7.5%) 35 (26.7%) 87 (16.9%)
> 40 years 0 (0.0%) 1 (1.3%) 1 (0.09%) 20 (27.8%) 5 (7.5%) 10 (7.6%) 37 (7.2%)
Some high school, no diploma 0 (0.0%) 1 (1.3%) 0 (0.0%) 3 (4.17%) 3 (4.5%) 3 (2.3%) 10 (1.9%)
High school graduate/diploma
or the equivalent
2 (4.0%) 7 (9.0%) 6 (5.1%) 11 (15.3%) 5 (7.5%) 15 (11.5%) 46 (8.9%)
Some college credit, no
degree
2 (4.0%) 6 (7.7%) 4 (3.4%) 1 (1.4%) 3 (4.5%) 13 (9.9%) 29 (5.6%)
College degree 14 (28.0%) 25 (32.1%) 36 (30.8%) 23 (31.9%) 34 (50.8%) 43 (32.8%) 175 (34.0%)
Graduate or professional
degree
32 (64.0%) 39 (50.0%) 71 (60.7%) 34 (47.2%) 22 (32.8%) 57 (43.5%) 225 (49.5%)
< 3.3* 13 (32.5%) 20 (43.5%) 33 (43.4%) 6 (12.5%) 16 (39.1%) 3 (5.1%) 91 (29.6%)
3.3 - 3.7* 14 (35.0%) 20 (43.5%) 27 (35.5%) 23 (47.9%) 18 (43.8%) 13 (22.0%) 115 (37.1%)
> 3.7* 13 (32.5%) 6 (13.0%) 16 (21.1%) 19 (39.6%) 7 (17.1%) 43 (72.9%) 104 (33.6%)
* First semester students (n=205) do not have GPAs. GPA sample size was n=310 (Dental n = 40, Law n = 46, Medicine n = 76, Nursing n = 48, Pharmacy n = 41, Social Work n = 59)
APPENDIX B: DEMOGRAPHICS OF SAMPLE
44. HOW DOES AVERAGE
RANK SUM WORK?
Group Value Rank for Teal Rank for Navy
Teal 4 3
Navy 5 4
Teal 7 5
Navy 8 6
Navy 3 2
Teal 2 1
Rank sum 9 12
Average Rank
sum
2.25 3