I think I agree. However I'd be interested in how this fits with the
cancer patients we have been working with. They have used a Web site
in the community setting of the clinic waiting room and two of them
at home also. They show dedication to studying everything they can
get hold of (the whole Web site) that I can only describe as driven.
Some visit parts of the site repeatedly and one explains, for
example, that she's trying to understand more about how the cancer
spreads. She explains her understanding of the process a number of
different ways, all incomplete and inadequate and yet somewhere on
the way to mastery. (I'm thinking about what these people do in terms
of Gavriel Salomon's proposition about the interaction
of individual and distributed cognitions.)
Out of their own immediate need for information about their own
condition that will give them control and reassurance, some patients
seem to have developed a more general interest. The woman I referred
to above has talked of wanting to know 'everything' - and she has
recorded the questions that emerge for her out of using the Web site.
I would have worked hard to achieve something like this in the formal
setting of the classroom: I think the drivenness of it is important.
And so too is their need to be able to 'prepare themselves' for
participation in the community - whether through dialogue with
doctors, family or friends.
Like others, we found it difficult to decide how to look at what was
going on and have used interviews, observation, participant
and researcher diaries and computer logs. I had to work hard to
persuade the medics I work with that we shouldn't attempt to measure
pre-determined learning outcomes. We've talked to our participants
about their experiences of learning in this way - their purposes,
the processes involved and the outcomes. One - unsurprising - thing
we seem to have shown (though with a very small study) is that there
were more, and more positive, outcomes for those who chose to use the
resource than for those who we asked to use it in order that it could
be evaluated.
It seems that those whose activity can be described as
'using tools to learn about cancer in order to meet their own
cognitive and affective needs.' - seemed to learn/benefit more than
those whose activity can be described as 'using tools to satisfy
somebody else's (the researcher's) needs'. Moreover the processes
appeared to differ between the two groups two - though we don't have
enough data on this. But they talk about 'control' - the division of
labour is different from that in other situations wehre they are
trying to learn about cancer. And there are examples of them working
together, introducing others to the resource etc.
Like Sarah and joe I'm delighted to come across people working in
similiar areas... (and Sarah, if you bump into Vicki Risko or any of
the language people there, say Hi to them from me)
Sally
Sally Tweddle, CRC Senior Fellow in Cancer Information and Education,
CRC Institute for Cancer Studies, Clinical Research Block,
University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TA
Tel: 0121 414 3550 Fax: 0121 414 3263