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Thursday 6th November 2008 8:00 am

Eszter Hargittai: Best Practices for Skill Development

A professor and internet researcher concludes our series on the Civic Learning Online Workshop by reflecting on how we ensure all youth have equal access to relevant online skills. She outlines possible approaches and key questions for spreading internet know-how.

Participating in discussions with so many experts on learning and civic engagement at the CLO workshop was a unique and valuable experience and I thank the organizers for giving me the opportunity to take part. I came away with many thoughts and questions of which I will focus on one here: How do we ensure that youth from varying backgrounds have the necessary skills to participate in online conversations about civic engagement?

The CLO project seems to be tackling this issue by creating a series of short multi-media tutorials. These look promising, as long as young users find them and recognize their value. Fortunately, they are integrated into the Puget Sound Off Web site prominently for easy access. The youth-friendly design of the tutorials is hopefully appealing to the intended audience. (I wonder if the production group has engaged in any focus group meetings with youth to see their reactions to these materials. That may be one way to gauge the effectiveness of the format.) Additionally, by focusing on skills in fairly small chunks, they should hold people’s attention. As more materials become available, I recommend the creation of an overall guide to the tutorials on Puget Sound Off. This listing would present the available materials in a way that would allow more advanced users to skip over instructions about basic skills easily to find what is of most relevance to their immediate needs. (For example, as more tutorials are added, the current material entitled Blogging may be renamed to be more specific about which aspect of blogging it addresses.)

What may be other approaches to spreading know-how? Oftentimes skills of this sort are learned on a need-to-know basis. What’s a good approach to having guidance available just when a young producer needs it? One possibility is to create a network within the Puget Sound Off site that links more and less knowledgeable users. This could be as simple as offering a link on the How To page to a discussion within the site dedicated to this topic.

Additionally, I wonder about the possibility of partnering up with the local organization Reel Grrls to offer some tutorials and sessions for people who are interested in learning more, but are not sure where they can get access to the relevant devices and skills. The advantage of working with a group like Reel Grrls is that youth would be learning from their peers. The benefit to Reel Grrls is the potential to recruit new members. The partnership could be publicized on Puget Sound Off and perhaps the resulting videos from such a session can be featured on the site thereby encouraging future participation by additional members.

Ensuring equal access to relevant skills will remain a challenge of such initiatives. We need to continue brainstorming about possible avenues including a careful look at how current efforts resonate with youth.

Category: Civic-Engagement

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