I’ve been thinking a lot about the issue of Facebook login and the ReadWriteWeb experience.  For those of you not familiar, a post on ReadWriteWeb discussed the use of Facebook Connect to create a ‘one true login’ for people browsing on certain Internet services.  What happened after they posted seems to be the result of Google’s new ‘real time’ web search and simplistic usage of web browsers. The post was overwhelmed by people searching for ‘facebook login’ and hitting the first link available which happened to be ReadWriteWeb’s post, rather than the expected Facebook login page.  Both annoyance and hilarity ensued with Facebook users not liking the redesign of Facebook (which was actually ReadWriteWeb’s page) and Internet Denizens shaking their heads in disbelief (to put it mildly).

But the thing that occurs to me is not that people are dumb or lazy, but that they have limited critical thinking skills and not been in a position to develop them.  It’s not something we teach well in schools and something that is hard to get university students to engage in, particularly when it comes to use of technology.  I should know, I teach first year information systems.  I realised as I was editing the scrugged paper that we should be thinking of the problem displayed in this incident in terms of learning outcomes, because, really, this is an outcome of learning as it has been achieved by these users.

One of the most useful resources I use for my first year course is the SOLO taxonomy (Biggs and Collis, 1982).  There is a very simple and clear version of it here. Basically, it allows an educator to analyse how students are approaching learning and gives very specific ways of thinking about the outcomes.  What more could one want from a tool called “Structured Observation of Learning Outcomes”.  Applying these observed learning outcomes to what seems to be happening in incidents like the ReadWriteWeb saga, not to mention the Beijing Olympic Ticketing Scam (which I discuss in a paper in AJTE (PDF)), we can actually see the problem very clearly.

SOLO taxonomy

Pre-structural: here students are simply acquiring bits of unconnected information, which have no organisation and make no sense.

• Individual knows there is a site called Facebook and that you can log in.

Unistructural: simple and obvious connections are made, but their significance is not grasped.

• Individual knows you can search for a site called facebook and log in

Multistructural: a number of connections may be made, but the meta-connections between them are missed, as is their significance for the whole.

• Individual knows you can go to a site called facebook.com and log in

Relational level: the student is now able to appreciate the significance of the parts in relation to the whole.

• Individual knows you can go to http://facebook.com and log in

At the extended abstract level, the student is making connections not only within the given subject area, but also beyond it, able to generalise and transfer the principles and ideas underlying the specific instance.

• Individual knows you can hit CMD+L, type FA, hit the down arrow and then enter and then log in to facebook (For windows users, start with CTRL+L)

Breaking down the ways of approaching browsing the web from a cognitive perspective shows a clear distinction between the processes that people use to navigate.  It’s not a perfect fit, but we can begin to see that at the abstract and extended abstract level, individuals are able to use whatever shortcuts available in their browser to assist in their browsing – they are extending their knowledge outside of simple browsing and into the nitty gritty of the functioning of the browser itself.  These are processes that become ingrained into our habits, for I think I and many others I know, work in that level.  But the majority of what we teach, the processes that teachers know (or at least the outcomes that students display), seem to occur at the uni- and mulitstructural level.  And with each passing year, it seems that there are fewer opportunities to engage in learning activities that develop deeper cognitive structures.

Reference:

Biggs, J and Collis, K. (1982) Evaluating the Quality of Learning: the SOLO taxonomy New York: Academic Press