A Role-Play Game to Facilitate the Development of Students. Reflective Internet Skills

Introduction Even though they are members of a digital generation, many youngsters are digitally illiterate because they still have great difficulties with critical, reflective, and responsible use of the Internet (e.g., van Deursen & van Diepen, 2013; Kuiper, Volman, & Terwel, 2005; Squire, Devane, & Durga, 2008; Walraven, Brand-Gruwel, & Boshuizen, 2009). Students need to develop their ability to determine the accuracy of online resources and the credibility of other users, to know their online audience and how to present themselves accordingly, and to understand social norms and online communication rules (cf. Litt, 2013). In the curricula of Dutch primary and secondary education, little attention is paid to the development of this kind of reflective Internet skills of students. Students have to develop these skills implicitly, during their free time or school time while completing school assignments. Teaching students these reflective Internet skills more explicitly might facilitate the development of these skills. In this paper, we present the results of an evaluation of teaching with a role-play game to promote students' reflective Internet skills. Reflective internet skills With the rapid development of information and communication technologies and online communication technologies in particular, adolescents are currently the most frequent users of the Internet. They spend more time online than adults do, and they use the Internet more for social interaction. Although studies from the 1990s showed that adolescents' online communication increased their online relationships with strangers (e.g., Nie, 2001), recent studies provide evidence that adolescents use the Internet more to maintain their existing friendships, become less concerned how others perceive them, and feel fewer inhibitions in disclosing intimate information (cf. Valkenburg & Peter, 2009). Obviously, when media use changes, its outcomes may change. Using the Internet for more and more intimate communication demands more and different Internet skills of the user. In a recent review of measurements of Internet skills, Litt (2013) concluded that most studies focused on information and technical skills and that more attention is needed to study communicative and socio-emotional skills, such as the ability to determine the credibility of other users, to know one's online audience and how to present oneself accordingly, and to understand the social norms of sites and services. Various concepts have been used to describe these reflective Internet skills, of which media literacy is widely used in Dutch primary and secondary education. Buckingham, Banaji, Burn, Carr, Cranmer, & Willett (2005) defines media literacy as "the ability to access, understand and create communications in a variety of contexts" (p. 9). This definition implies that media-literate students know what information is available and how they can retrieve it; use and process information in a wide range of ways; make judgments about the authenticity, honesty, relevance, or accuracy of information; and create new products, and present, share and transfer information in suitable forms. The latter is also explored by Litt (2012) as the notion of an "imagined audience"--a person's mental conceptualization of the people with whom he or she is communicating. Studies on Internet skills of secondary school students in the Netherlands (van Deursen & van Diepen, 2013; van Deursen, van Dijk, & Peters, 2011; Kuiper, Volman, & Terwel, 2009; Walraven et al., 2009) show that students possess technical skills to use the Internet, but that they have problems with, among other things, accurate search queries, critical evaluation of Internet sources, and awareness of their online audience. Many students appeared to be inconsistent, impulsive, and impatient Internet users. These findings align with conclusions about reflective Internet skills of secondary school students in other countries (e. …