Web-Based Homework – What Do Teens & Tweens Really Want
Written on February 4, 2008 by Linda Braun
What did 90 teens & tweens between 8 and 18 years old have to say about web-based homework help? Quite a bit. Including:
- Wikipedia and Google are their first choices for finding information.
- When needing help with homework, students ask friends or family first.
- Teens and tweens rarely think of asking a librarian for homework help, but they do think of asking them for leisure reading information.
- A web-based set of homework resources that teens & tweens can customize for their own purposes has great appeal.
- Web-based homework support has to be available where tweens and teens already are online – Facebook, MySpace, Club Penguin, etc. – and shouldn’t require that they go somewhere else, for example a library sponsored web site.
These findings are part of a project NYPL, along with the QPL and BPL, initiated in the fall of 2007. The plan was to find out what teens and tweens said about web-based homework help. The research also looked at what students said about their use of Homework NYC. This was initiated in order to help figure out what to do next in providing library-sponsored online homework support. The research was completed as part of an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) research grant, and the findings were used as part of a new IMLS grant application. This new grant, if funded, will give the three New York City Library Systems the chance to develop a whole new approach to providing online homework support to teens and tweens (and teachers).
The grant will provide funding for development of customizable widgets that teens and tweens can integrate into a variety of web sites and platforms. Widgets that might be developed include ones for:
- Searching the library catalog, Google, and Wikipedia.
- Planning and managing homework tasks and deadlines.
- Keeping track of and recommending books, movies, music, etc.
Students will be able to add the widgets to Facebook, mySpace, iGoogle, or a computer desktop. And, teens and tweens will be able to customize the widgets for specific purposes and they will be able to exchange them with friends.The project also includes funding for connecting with teachers in order to help guarantee that educators know how to best support student homework needs virtually. In the focus groups teens and tweens stated that their teachers played an integral role in determining the web tools used in support of homework. Teacher training, along with a homework web site just for educators, will be developed as a part of the project.
Two sets of findings and recommendations are available. The first set is the result of a series of focus groups with teens and tweens in all three boroughs. In these focus groups the students talked about their web-based research habits and behaviors. The second set is the outcome of talking with teens, in three NYPL branch libraries, about their use of widgets and about their ideas for library widgets that support homework.
Filed in: Collaboration, Content, users.
[...] Web-Based Homework – What Do Teens & Tweens Really Want | NYPL Labs (tags: education libraries library web teen) [...]
Does this confirm the fact that NYPL’s Digital Experience is generally not interested in the research needs of graduate, post-graduate or professional scholars, and will not venture beyond the grant-funded confines of high school education? If so, can the team at least say as much, as progress is made to turn the Experience into a REALITY?
I know NYPL can’t be all things to all people, but we do try, and we should be honest about who our programs are aimed at and why. Is the “Digital Experience” the equivalent to digital library programs at colleges and universities or will it rather be focusing on high school students and 8 year olds? Does the team think there is a difference? Thanks
Anonymous commenter – this is by *NO* means the case. The goal of the Digital Experience group is to focus on the needs of *all* NYPL users, most definitely including those of scholars and researchers. If it seems like the majority of projects we’re talking about here skew toward youth or the more traditional “public” (as opposed to “research”) functions of the Library, it’s because there were quicker, more visible things we could hammer on immediately. We’re currently sketching out a number of initiatives over the next year that will support scholarly research, from new visualizations of digital collections to integration with new research and analysis tools.
For what it’s worth, as the head of the Digital Experience group I’ll perform the bloggy equivalent of standing and baring my battle scars. Personally, I’m *very* committed to building out the cyberinfrastructure for digital scholarship, having spent the time between my PhD and arriving at NYPL at one of the major digital humanities centers. Among a lot of other work, I was one of the co-directors of the Zotero project, which holds the potential for a radical transformation of what it means to both research and publish scholarship, and am very much plugged into the worlds of both the higher ed digital library programs and the broader conversations about digital research.
On your last point, a brief statement (I’ll write more on this in upcoming days) – to me, as a relative newcomer to the NYPL, your comment plays on the long-reified distinction between research and public libraries. The NYPL is virtually alone in its dual identity – there are almost *no* similar institutions that serve both communities, and until now the Library has done so by having two parallel organizations. Now, in part through the Digital Experience group, we have the opportunity to not just serve both communities, but rethink the ways in which our users work. In other words, maybe it’s not an either / or, but a series of shades between the conventionally “Research” and “Branch” activities. We’re in the unique position of being able to support users all along that continuum.
Like I said, more on this soon…