Abstract Library science students in school librarianship were surveyed to determine their information seeking and avoidance behaviors in Web-based online environments. Two coping styles were identified among students. Barriers to student online collaboration, such as individual preferences, concerns on efficiency, and lack of mutual trust, were observed. Introduction Previous studies found individuals may behave differently in a group environment versus when they are alone . In education literature, team-based learning, or collaborative learning, has been accepted as an effective means to enhance education. While employers appreciate team work in professional settings, faculty might hesitate to integrate collaborative activities into curriculum, partly due to uncertainty of student behaviors in group environments. From students’ perspectives, group projects may be completed by one or two individuals, while the rest of the team members are idle. Online education often makes collaboration even harder as students may never meet face-to-face, since face-to-face meetings are important factors in promoting individual interactions and success .
Team-based work is essential in performing daily school library services to teachers and students, but it has not been widely adopted in school librarian education. Hence, it may be beneficial to expand current educational curricula to include the skills of effective teamwork in order to prepare library students for reallife collaborative projects. Such approach may help in-service school librarians to design more interactive library programs. To accomplish this goal, it may help for educators and librarians to gain a better understanding of how to spot student who have a propensity for team work. Currently, little is known about how to identify students who tend toward collaborative learning online as opposed to those who avoid collaboration, particularly in school library distance education coursework. The purpose of this project is to identify potential avoidance behaviors exhibited by students in online classrooms of a school library program. Of particular interest is the question of how individual coping styles in information seeking and avoidance will influence collaborative learning in a Web-based collaborative learning environment. Copying styles are idefined as monitors (seekers) and blunters (avoiders) in this paper.
This paper addresses the following research questions:
• How to identify collaborators in an online learning environment using a coping behavior scale?
• To what extent will different coping styles affect school library students’ tendencies to collaborate, whether the collaboration is required or optional?
Literature review Collaborative learning Computer-assisted collaborative learning theories are based on two important theoretical models: social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986) and social development theory (Vygotsky & Cole, 1978). Social cognitive theory emphasizes the importance of observing others and imitating the observed action during the learning process. Social development theory suggests that social interaction, beyond observational learning, plays a fundamental role in the development of cognition. Social development theory was based on the context of language learning in children.
Similar terms have been used interchangeably in education literature for learning collaboratively, notably cooperative learning, student team learning , group investigation , and collaborative learning . Farmer (1999) stated that cooperative learning emphasized structured groups of people who have a specific learning task to accomplish together, while collaborative learners may not need a deep-seated relationship with their peers in order to work with them. Collaborative learning may improve students’ self-esteem, attitude toward school, and ability to work with others .
Information Avoidance Information scientists, while studying information seeking behavior, found that people who are stressed may not seek information actively, and in some cases they may avoid all forms of information . A widely used tool to measure information avoidance is Suzanne M. Miller’s coping styles theory. The theory suggests that when facing stressful situations, people differ in ways of dealing with information. Monitors try to decrease the stress by actively seeking, in effect, keeping them alert. Blunters deal with the adverse events by distracting themselves and avoiding information in order to protect themselves. Miller Behavior Style Scale (MBSS) differentiates participants as either monitors or blunters based on their answer to scenario-based questions . The MBSS has been validated by previous researchers, particularly regardi