Instilling a Culture of Participation: Technology-Related Skills and Attitudes of Aspiring Information Professionals

Abstract

End users are increasingly frequent contributors to design and development activities. A fundamental necessity to these activities is the existence of a culture of participation, in which users are empowered to solve meaningful problems through technology. This combination of attitudes and skills provides the foundation for end-user-development activity. This preliminary study explores efforts to instill a culture of participation in students training to become information professionals. This demographic is uniquely suited for such research due to students’ low incoming technology skillset, educational programs that often fail to heavily cover technology topics, and a high need for end-user-development activities in their future workplaces. This qualitative study explores the evolution of students’ skills and attitudes throughout an introductory technology course, finding that common instructional techniques induced positive attitude and skills change in many, but negative or fearful attitudes towards technology were still present, suggesting future exploration is needed in this area.