34 Zeichnungen von Studierenden, wie sie sich das Itnerent vorstellen.

Beginning users often exhibit confusion about what itmeans to be "on" the Internet, and they would likely benefit from adiscussion of the scope and structure of Internet connectivity. Theproblem lies in creating a meaningful visual which would accompanythe verbal information. This document discusses an exercise wherebygraduate students who had completed 5 weeks of an Internet-relatedcourse were asked to draw a diagram of the Internet as theyunderstood it. Thirty-four drawings ranged from very simplistic tovery technical, but several patterns emerged, with the Internetvariously represented as a client-server scenario, a giant loop, aspoke and hub configuration, or a container. The client-serverdepiction had already been presented in the class by the instructor,and it ended up appearing most often in the exercise. Only threedrawings focused on the global nature of the Internet. When the sameexercise was administered to non-users, 31 drawings more frequentlyincluded some visual reference to the world, perhaps because thenotion of global connectivity is one that the media likes to hype.Visual aids may help neginning users sort through confusingterminology and misleading metaphors, although many participants inthe first exercise whose drawings did not appear to represent.theInternet in any reasonable way still ret,,ined accurate verbalknowledge of the Internet's character. ..urther study is recommended.Six student illustrations are included in a total of eight figures.(BEW)