I know of one article on how new users gain knowledge and it may reference other useful sources: http://www.mtschaefer.net/entry/rtfm-teach-yourself-culture-open-source-soft... Best, Kim On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 2:48 PM, Peter Timusk <ptimusk@sympatico.ca> wrote:
I often find myself helping neighbours, family, and consumer/survivors of psychiatry to connect to the Internet for the first time.
A peer to peer support group for consumers/survivor of psychiatry I am involved with as a director offers our members lessons in email and surfing/cerfing.
I am curious to hear of any research in this area or some suggested terms to use to search journals and my university library.
Should I be looking for the terms "novice computer users" or "novice Internet users"?
I am sure this is a valuable area of research as this is part of connecting people to the net that so much public money is supporting.
One would not think there would need to lessons in using a telephone ( may be there were in the past) and the telephone is also affected by public money.
I know from my own reading internet studies and data that training is an important predictor. Not the most important but it has an affect.
My biases are that I would like new users to get a good view of the diversity rather than all being funneled into Google, MSN, Facebook, etc.
For instance in helping my Scottish mother-in-law I suggested she would be able to read Scottish new papers everyday on her computer.
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