Just curious: children's use of digital reference for unimposed queries and its importance in informal education.

ABSTRACT

This research investigated the informal use of two children's digital reference services that were used for purposes unintended by the designers. The motivation for this research was to explore the ways that children bend to their own informal uses the formal tools designed to support their education. Research questions included, How and with what frequency do children use digital reference services to answer their own questions? Do digital reference services support self-initiated learning? Could digital reference services support the transfer of student motivation and curiosity from formal education to informal education? What do instructional and software designers need to consider in creating tools that support a notion of transformed education and learning? Results answered these questions and uncovered several unanticipated findings. Digital reference services were shown to support efforts to interest children in science-related careers as early as fourth or fifth grade and to support self-initiated learning in science. Unanticipated findings showed that students ask different kinds of questions as they progress through school, and they should receive training in the use of digital reference services in elementary school. Further conclusions provide insights for digital reference software and service design and suggestions for more strategic pedagogical use of digital references services.

INTRODUCTION

Children's digital reference services are a form of interactive communication technology (ICT) used to support curriculum-based education. Accordingly, most research focuses on children's use of digital reference services for imposed queries within a setting of formal learning. In utter disregard for educators' and designers' desires, however, children frequently send unimposed queries to digital reference services to support their informal learning needs. In a discussion of bricks-and-mortar libraries, Riechel points out the importance of considering children's informal use of formal resources: "The completion of homework assignments is all too often perceived to be the only reason to visit the library" (1991, p. xii). He states that a reference service should serve as a "primary source for the fulfillment of all information needs, not just those that are school related" (p. 120). This neglect is even more noticeable--and regrettable--in the study of digital libraries and their digital reference services, which are encountering growing numbers of self-initiated, unimposed queries from children.

The first large-scale recognition of informal learning's importance occurred in 1984, when the National Science Foundation created the Division of Informal Science Education. The division's creation was based on a report that identified museums, libraries, and other community organizations as vital to education (National Science Board, 1983). In the interim, several smaller groups and initiatives have sprung up to address research into informal education. The need and opportunity for study, however, currently outstrip the attention given by scholars. One reason for this dearth of attention is that research on this topic is inherently difficult: it usually relies on children's communication skills to write (in logs), organize thoughts (in interviews), and articulate logical abstractions (in think-aloud protocols). Children, however, possess varying cognitive skills and may not be able to participate in these research methods. The difficulties of this work, however, must be overcome because more than 85 million U.S. children are on the Internet (U.S. Census Bureau, 2001), and, to some degree, their future success depends on their ability to use the Web effectively to find and use information.

The research reported in this article was undertaken to address this shortage of information and to explore Sefton-Green's (2004) notion that research on the use of ICTs for informal learning may reform educational theory and transform the nature of education altogether: "young people's interaction with ICTs outside of formal education is a complex 'educational' experience" that will compel us to redefine "simplistic definitions of learning and education" (Sefton-Green, 2004).

Definitions of Informal Learning

"Informal learning" is one of many terms that have been applied to learning outside of school. It is related to Oldfather's and McCaughlin's (1993) "continuing impulse to learn." Similarly, "interest" is expressed as the degree of interactivity between a student and an object (Livingstone, 2001), with students who have higher interest in a topic capable of more engagement and persistence (Mexander et al., 1997; Krapp, Hidi, & Renninger, 1992; Schiefele, 1998.) Often, this higher interest is called intrinsic motivation--learning for inherent satisfaction (Ryan & Deci, 2000)--and constitutes a desirable educational outcome in itself (Krapp, 2002; Ryan & Powelson, 1991). Intrinsic motivation requires no gold stars, no grades, and no classroom pizza parties. In fact, such external motivators may inhibit and erode natural intrinsic motivation (Deci, Koestner, & Ryan, 2001). Deci and Ryan (2000) suggest that, when students are encouraged to bring their own experiences and prior knowledge to the teaching setting, they are more motivated to pursue self-initiated learning. Further, self-initiated learning is a defining behavior of lifelong learners and a desirable goal for all students. These descriptions provide a general understanding of informal learning. A more specific description, however, is needed for further research; it is based on two contexts of informal learning.

First, within the context of education, Sefton-Green (2004) defines three kinds of informal learning, all of which occur in nonschool environments: educational experiences provided to support curricula; educational experiences provided to support socially important, but not curriculum-related, learning; and leisure activities outside the realm of socially valued educational experience. The setting for this study is a pair of digital reference services that provide out-of-school information about curriculum-related and socially valued topics--a combination of Sefton-Green's first two definitions.

A second context for defining learning is found in library science, where learning occurs when users pair information needs with search words and query the system, collection, or…