Chapter 7: Summary, conclusion, and recommendations
3.7 Barriers to Internet information behaviour among high school learners
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own, without any formal training, and as a result, they used the simplest and most common techniques for retrieving information (Malliari et al., 2014:277).
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overload can result in the information seeker ignoring “relevant information or becoming too superficial in information seeking” (Savolainen, 2015:619). Shenton’s (2008:281) study found that, outcome overload was generally common among learners especially when they were not able to define their search limits during the searching process for information on the Internet.
Barriers to information accessibility and retrieval from the Internet “can also be external or internal to information seekers”. While most of the external barriers originate outside of the individual information seeker and are thus imposed on him/her - for example, spatial challenges such as long distance to an Internet source for Internet access, Internet access restrictions, temporal challenges like “an absolute deadline limiting the time available for information seeking” and socio-cultural challenges such as “bureaucratic inertia” contribute to external barriers to information accessibility -internal barriers on the other hand originate from inside of the individual information seeker (Savolainen, 2015:613). These internal barriers can be divided into affective and cognitive barriers with affective barriers stemming generally from “negative emotions such as fear of facing unpleasant facts while seeking” information and cognitive barriers including “unawareness of relevant information sources and poor search skills” (Savolainen, 2015:613). Clearly, barriers are
“found to be an ingredient part of information seeking” (Ogba, 2015:6).
3.7.1.1 External barriers
External barriers that are common to learners Internet information-seeking include slow or poor Internet connections, Internet filtering and censoring, access restrictions, and inadequate facilities (computers and computer laboratories) (Gilmour et al., 2016:58; Nkomo, 2009:98). Particularly, external barriers such as lack of Internet and other ICTs infrastructure and accessibility may not pose much of a challenge in the advanced countries. For example, in Italy, Borca et al. (2015:49) found that 95% of high school learners have personal computers at home and 66% of them surf the Internet every day; in Greece, almost every learner (95.9%) have access to a personal computer at home with more than 86% having access to the Internet (Malliari, 2014:273); every high school learner in USA since 2003 has access to internet in school (NCES, 2004).
However, in Africa, studies have shown that, ICT infrastructure and Internet accessibility are common challenges that hinder learners quest to seek online information (Ajiboye and Tella 2007;
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King, 2007; Osei, Larbi and Osei-Boadi, 2014). According to Atuahene and Owusu-Ansah (2013), there exist limited ICT infrastructure in high schools in Ghana and this affirms Ghana Education Service's e-Readiness Report (2009) which revealed that more than 80% of high schools in Ghana had no access to the Internet. Studies in Ghana have further shown that, majority of high school learners do not have access to the Internet (Agyei and Voogt, 2011; Amenyedzi, Lartey and Dzomeku, 2011; Quarshie and Ami-Narh, 2012; Atuahene and Owusu-Ansah, 2013; Osei, Larbi and Osei-Boadi, 2014) and this situation is a challenge towards their online information seeking.
3.7.1.2 Internal barriers
On the other hand, internal barriers have been seen in work-related and non-work related contexts among high school learners. Internal barriers such as “unawareness of relevant information sources” and “poor search skills” have been revealed in “studies focusing on information seeking among younger people” like high school learners, with poor search skills being rampant on searches conducted using networked services such as the Internet (Savolainen, 2015:617-618). The scope and volume of information on the Internet requires good search skills such as the ability to formulate relevant keywords to find the information one is looking for. However, studies have found that learners lack the skills and experience necessary to construct efficient and sophisticated search strategies, as well as to evaluate the retrieved resources and these limitations constitute internal barriers (Kuiper et al., 2008; Aula, Khan and Guan, 2010; Nkomo et al., 2011; Leeder and Shah, 2016). For example, a study by Nkomo (2009:98) revealed that learners were unable to evaluate online information sources effectively, lacked searching skills, unable to reference Internet sources, and faced with information overload. These depict that learners are faced with internal barriers when accessing the Internet for online information.
Although an information seeker may be able to access and select potentially relevant information sources from the Internet, his/her “inability to differentiate pertinent information from large masses of documents may become a barrier” hence barriers manifesting themselves in poor search skills can be attributed to lack of “procedural knowledge about how to identify and access information sources” (Savolainen, 2015:619). In a study conducted by Leeder and Shah (2016:5) among high school learners in USA, more than 60% of the learners' searches were unsuccessful because of lack of retrieval skills.
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Results from a study conducted by Malliari et al. (2014) in Greece also indicates that, high school learners are not frequent evaluators of the information they use. More than half of the learners were not applying any of the criteria usually used for the evaluation of information sources.
Comparatively, learners from USA and Greece are expected to be more technologically driven than learners in Ghana due to a gap in technological infrastructure. Hence, the possibility of such barrier affecting high school learners in Ghana could not be rare, since lack of skills to use, access, and evaluate Internet information sources have been noted as a potential information seeking barrier among learners (Leeder and Shah, 2016; Osei, Larbi and Osei-Bonsu, 2014; Aula, Khan and Guan, 2010; Lorenzen, 2001).
Understanding the barriers to information seeking of high school learners is a big step towards understanding the information seeking behaviour of students (Ogba, 2015:2). The selection of information sources can also be inhibited when the information seeker lacks sufficient knowledge of relevant sources of information with low self-efficacy hampering information seeking “if the individual develops scenarios about the failure in selecting and accessing information sources”
(Savolainen, 2015:619). There appear to be inability and uncertainty about how to evaluate the quality of information from the Internet (Sin, 2015:472) among high school learners and this poses a barrier to online information accessibility.
3.7.2 Lack of support from teachers as a barrier
There are a number of efforts and investments worldwide to integrate ICT into education (Goktas et al., 2013) and teachers are among the key people to ensure its effective implementation. Many teachers especially in the advanced countries have incorporated ICT in their delivery (Prestridge, 2012; Kopcha, 2012; Goktas et al., 2013; Al-Mulhim, 2014) which helps improve the ICT skills of learners. However, studies conducted in the United Arab Emirates, Spain and Iran indicate that a number of teachers were not using computers in class and a reason assigned by teachers was lack of time (Ismail, Almekhlafi, and Al-Mekhlafy, 2010; Sa ´nchez et al., 2012; Salehi and Salehi, 2012; Kafyulilo et al., 2015). This finding is not different from studies conducted in Ghana (Agyei and Voogt, 2011; Osei, Larbi and Osei-Bonsu, 2014) although, the teachers in Ghana assigned infrastructural challenges and lack of skills as reasons.
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A number of teachers in Ghana have been found not to possess ICT skills (Agyei and Voogt, 2011;
Quarshie and Ami-Narh, 2012; Atuahene, 2013; Osei, Larbi and Osei-Bonsu, 2014); hence were not able to support and guide their learners to seek online information effectively. A study conducted by Amenyedzi, Lartey and Dzomeku (2011) revealed that, more than 70% of teachers in high schools in Ghana were not organising computer-based lessons neither were they offering Internet-based assignments to learners and these posed challenges to learners’ information accessibility and retrieval from the Internet.
It has been found that, a number of teachers were not supporting learners to access online information from the Internet since they lacked the skills in accessing the Internet themselves (Al- Mulhim, 2014; Larbi and Osei-Bonsu, 2014). Integrating the use of the Internet into teaching and learning in schools is a major step in developing the skills and strategies of learners in accessing and retrieving online information (IFLA, 2010; Goktas et al., 2013). It is however, important to note that, educational delivery is greatly spearheaded by teachers, thus teachers’ inability to access the Internet due to lack of skills makes it difficult to embrace the use of the Internet in teaching and learning (Salehi and Salehi, 2012; Kafyulilo et al., 2015). Clearly such teachers lack the capacity to support their learners to access the Internet for online information.
3.7.3 Internet use policy as a barrier
The rules and policies for Internet access among high school learners in their schools could also pose a challenge to online information accessibility. A study conducted by Viseu (2005:64) among high school learners in Portugal revealed that learners were frustrated in accessing Internet at school because they were allowed to use the Internet for only 30 minutes which was not enough for them to effectively search, read and select information from the Internet.
Lack of adequate Internet infrastructure at school has been found as a factor that compels school authorities to restrict learners’ access to the Internet. School authorities in their quest to ensure all learners have access to the limited Internet facilities available in school resort to drawing up policies that end up restricting learners access to the Internet (Amenyedzi, Lartey and Dzomeku, 2011; Ito et al., 2010; Jenkins, 2006). School rules and policies therefore have the potential of
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hindering the teaching of effective Internet research since most instructors are not able to incorporate Internet searching and literacy skills effectively in their instructions, due to Internet filters and other use policies in their schools; thereby posing a challenge to learners Internet information seeking (Purcell et al., 2012:56).
Studies have shown that majority of high school learners access Internet through their mobile phones (Atwood, 2016; Madden et al., 2013; Combes, 2009). This attests to the fact that school policies that restrict learners access to the use of mobile phones at school hinders their access to the Internet. For example, the Ghana Education service has banned the use of mobile phones by learners at high schools. Grimus and Ebner’s (2015) study in Ghana found that the restriction in learners’ access to mobile phones at school limits their access to the Internet. They further recommended the need for learners to be allowed to use mobile phones since this could complement the limited Internet facilities available at high schools.