Infoenza Page 1
“Infoenza” and OTL: Symptoms and Treatment by Eileen Karp
“Infoenza” and OTL: Symptoms and Treatment
Symptoms of Infoenza:
I am an adult online graduate degree student studying Online Teaching and Learning. I have recently been notified by colleagues that I may be infected with the disease, “Infoenza”. In an attempt to help other students in my online community, I will describe for you the following symptoms and warning signs:
1. A feeling of overwhelm and lack of control to manage the amount of information available.
2. A dependence on and attachment to the inanimate world of computers, peripherals, and PDA devices.
3. A need for constant connections to virtual community with resultant guilt and/ or anxiety when not connected.
4. A worry, leading to panic, to fit course work requirements to available time.
5. A feeling of continuous pressure to keep up, as one week overlaps the next, leaving little time to rejuvenate.
6. A difficulty establishing a balance between virtual and real life.
7. A neglect of family and friends resulting from lack of family/ social time.
8. A sensation of constant stress caused by role conflicts.
9. A sense of fatigue rooted in sleep deprivation.
10. A decrease in physical activities.
11. An overuse of eyes, leading to eye strain, triggered by extensive reading, writing, and lengthy periods of time spent staring at the computer screen.
12. Muscle ache, including upper backache, sore neck, aching wrists, and calluses on all fingertips brought about by copious hours spent hunched over the computer.
Do these twelve warning signs sound familiar to you? If you are an online student today, you may also be an innocent victim of this disease! Infoenza symptoms are connected to the disease-like information epidemic that is spread on the Web.
Background of Disease
I entered the term “information literacy” on Google. Within 0.18 seconds, 63,300,000 results appeared! I must discover, among these documents, those references appropriate for my needs. Years ago in my previous student life, textbooks, encyclopedias, reference books, and microfiche files of magazines and newspapers were the main sources of available information. Evaluating the vast quantity of 550,000,000,000 documents for quality and relevance that are digitally available (McGovern, 2001) has changed the process of conducting research. Most of the world’s information is now contained within the internet. The sheer amount of information at my fingertips generates the feeling of overwhelm and lack of control to manage this information (symptom #1). On one hand, the availability of accessible information is beneficial because this reduces the disparity between rural, urban, and suburban researchers. On the other hand, processing and managing the available resources inside the walls of the world’s virtual library is daunting. It is so daunting, in fact, that an information literacy standard has been implemented in some countries, including the U.S. and Australia. So daunting, in fact, that some academic circles include information literacy among the essential elements required for student success in the 21st century, placing it side by side with the “3 R’s”.
Information literacy is the “Â…set of abilities enabling individuals to recognize when information is needed and [to] have the capacity to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information. An information literate person determines the extent of information neededÂ…” (The Australian Information Literacy Standards, 2001). Perhaps your own journey as an online student takes you down a similar path as my journey. In my quest toward becoming an information literate person when conducting research on the internet, I raise the following questions:
- “What constitutes ‘enough’?”
- “When can I walk away?”
- “How do I know that I have found it?”
- “What if I miss something?”
My OTL community generously shares their resources and findings and gives me even more to read and digest. I scream, “I am drowning in possibilitiesÂ… please teach me how to find an antidote!”
Professor Greenfield at Oxford University (Cochrane, 2003) says, “One has to draw the distinction between knowledge and information.” In the online learning environment, constructivism builds on the real life experiences and perspectives of fellow classmates. This scaffolding process develops the setting where “the whole represents more than the sum of its parts. [This creates] a synergy of its own when knowledge expands between learners”
(Bellenger, 2004).
Evidence of This Sickness
Here is a picture of my daily symptoms: I bring at least one shopping bag full of course papers to skim, read, and reflect on while commuting to work on the bus. At lunchtime, I sign onto Blackboard to read new postings, write responses to Discussion Board assignments or threads, post thoughts gleaned from my morning readings, or conduct research. At night, I either repeat this morning routine or, after teaching a traditional class, return home to sit at my paper strewn table, and resume by virtual life on the computer (symptoms #5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12). Since starting the MS-OTL program less than a year ago, my family is “used” to this behavior. For the most part, they support my endeavors and recognize the potential career possibilities these studies offer. I require limited distractions around me while I construct new knowledge (symptoms #6, 7, 8). Socially, my life is at a standstill.
Because of my worry about being “done” with course requirements, I am hesitant to commit to outside activities (symptoms #4, 5). Classwork is “done” only when a course ends. Otherwise, the virtual environment irresistibly pulls me into its magnetic web to read a new thread, post another thought, or check yet another resource (symptoms #2, 3). Fewer phone calls to and from friends and family further reduce communication. Quick e-mails, especially of jokes and “good readings”, replace real contact (symptoms #6, 7). As an adult student today, multiple roles pull me in a myriad of directions and demand my attention (symptom #8). When life’s challenges combine with the bombardment of available information, I become overwhelmed by the sorting and coping mechanisms needed to select, evaluate, and organize the information overload (symptoms 1, 9, 12).
Absence from virtual school because of travel, work or social commitments, and sickness is difficult for online students. After working all day, I recently went on a business trip and arrived at my destination at 11:30PM. I considered ordering web-TV in my hotel room in order to sign onto my class Discussion Board. Instead, I read and wrote after my near midnight arrival.
My meeting ran from 8AM to 4:30PM the next day and my return flight arrived at 11:30PM. I read during that flight and after arriving home. Much to my dismay, there were 164 threads posted on the Discussion Board and waiting to be read. This example points to the conflicts and pressures faced by online students who are struggling to balance their many roles in life (symptoms # 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 9, 11, 12).
Spread of Disease
It is my opinion that being a student in a traditional face-to-face class may be easier than being an online student. A face-to-face course meets at a specific time, in a physical space, and students can leave when class is over. Asynchronous “anytime, anyplace” learning brings with it the pressure of always being a student. OTL learners are unable to walk away from class.
Assignment deadlines push participants to complete individual and group work. This involves reading, researching, writing, and responding in a timely fashion. Most descriptions of online courses claim that 10 to 12 hours are required for student success. At the same time, social studies indicate that teachers must spend three times more time to prepare for and teach an online course (Palloff and Pratt, 2001). If instructors need to spend triple the time preparing for an online course, it makes sense that online students also need to spend much more time on class. My personal experiences, along with those of my classmates, suggest that triple the time noted in course descriptions may be a more realistic minimum weekly requirement for online students.
To be effective in this changing discipline of online learning, teachers and students must remain educationally current. To be educationally current, they must master the technology. Technology changes at an exponential rate.
These factors lead to a Catch-22 situation where teachers must become students in order to remain educationally current in order to teach effectively. What does it mean to “know” when all that we think we know continually changes? The book, “Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age”
(McKibben. 2003), claims that people’s lives today are part of an “era of exponential growth of change [that] itself is growing exponentially”. This growth of change becomes an “endless round on a treadmill”. My many roles in life sometimes make me feel like that treadmill is inside me as I run in circles just to keep pace with these changes (p. 55).
Need for a Cure and Treatment of Infoenza
A cure for infoenza is necessary. “For the e-learning evolutions to reach all those who desired and/or need it, educational institutions must start to pay more than lip service to the stresses and competing role demands of adult distance education studentsÂ…an accessible, comprehensive, and user-friendly support systemÂ…would go a long way towards helping all online learners navigate their present “roller coaster” life (Weisenberg, 2001).
References
Australian Information Literacy Standards. (2001). Retrieved October 24,
2005 from http://www.caul.edu.au/caul-doc/InfoLitStandards2001.doc
Bellenger, G. (2004). Knowledge management-emerging perspectives. Retrieved October 24, 2005, from http://www.systems-thinking.org/kmgmt/kmgmt.htm
Cochrane, N. (2003). Too much information. Retrieved October 26, 2005 from http://www.theage.com.au/cgi-bin/common/popupPrintArticle.pl?path=/articles/2003/11/10/1068329472603.html
McGovern, G. (2001). It’s an information overloaded world. Content critical (p. 4). Prentice Hall. Retrieved on October 26, 2005 from http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/content_critical.htm
McKibben, B. (2003). Even More. Too Much. From Enough: staying human in an engineered age (p.55). Henry Holt and Company, LLC. NY, NY.
Palloff, R. & Pratt, K. (2001). Lessons from the cyberspace classroom. 17th annual conference on distance teaching and learning. Retrieved on October 22, 2005 from http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conference/Resource_library/proceedings/01_20.pdf
Wiesenberg, F. (2001). The roller coaster life of the online learner: how distance educators can help students cope. Retrieved on October 22, 2005 from http://www.extension.usask.ca/cjuce/articles/v27pdf/2722.pdf