The Future of Learning by Searching the Web: Mobile, Social, and Multimodal

Recent technological developments related to the World Wide Web including mobile computing, social media, and online videos are shaping the way we learn. As argued in the present commentary, the majority of educational psychological research that has examined how individuals learn by searching the Web, however, has not kept up with this pace. Therefore, the goal of this commentary is to discuss how recent technological developments might affect how learners acquire knowledge through Web search and to provide a respective research agenda. Specifically, we will focus on the use of mobile devices and digital assistants, social networking sites, and online videos, and the opportunities and challenges they present to learners. In addition, we suggest that future research should study the ongoing learning processes during Web search in greater detail. We believe that examining the research questions raised in the present commentary will uniquely contribute to the literature on Web-based searching and learning.  MP3  Fil

Students’ approaches when researching complex geographical conflicts using the internet

Many teachers hesitate to integrate internet research into their lessons as they face major uncertainties concerning their students’ competencies in retrieving, evaluating and processing digital information. Understanding complex geographical conflicts using the internet poses special challenges to students, as they need to obtain multi-dimensional, spatial and temporally relevant information to grasp the conflict in its entirety. In order to obtain insights into students’ digital researching strategies, a study was conducted in 2018 with 20 German secondary school students, who were asked to form their own opinion on a complex geographical conflict by searching the internet for useful information. The students were instructed to share their thoughts and actions aloud while undertaking the research. All digital activities and accompanying speech were recorded with screen and audio capture technology. The analysis of the transcripts consisted of a combination of qualitative and basic quantitative analysis, which led to the conclusion that students have very different abilities in identifying multi-dimensional information on complex geographical conflicts. The majority of the students neither used maps nor paid attention to publication dates of websites or information. Furthermore, none of the participants questioned the credibility of their retrieved digital information

Information Search Patterns in Complex Tasks

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The Search as Learning Spaceship: Toward a Comprehensive Model of Psychological and Technological Facets of Search as Learning

Using a Web search engine is one of today’s most frequent activities. Exploratory search activities which are carried out in order to gain knowledge are conceptualized and denoted as Search as Learning (SAL). In this paper, we introduce a novel framework model which incorporates the perspective of both psychology and computer science to describe the search as learning process by reviewing recent literature. The main entities of the model are the learner who is surrounded by a specific learning context, the interface that mediates between the learner and the information environment, the information retrieval (IR) backend which manages the processes between the interface and the set of Web resources, that is, the collective Web knowledge represented in resources of different modalities. At first, we provide an overview of the current state of the art with regard to the five main entities of our model, before we outline areas of future research to improve our understanding of search as learning processes

The Search as Learning Spaceship: Toward a Comprehensive Model of Psychological and Technological Facets of Search as Learning

Using a Web search engine is one of today’s most frequent activities. Exploratory search activities which are carried out in order to gain knowledge are conceptualized and denoted as Search as Learning (SAL). In this paper, we introduce a novel framework model which incorporates the perspective of both psychology and computer science to describe the search as learning process by reviewing recent literature. The main entities of the model are the learner who is surrounded by a specific learning context, the interface that mediates between the learner and the information environment, the information retrieval (IR) backend which manages the processes between the interface and the set of Web resources, that is, the collective Web knowledge represented in resources of different modalities. At first, we provide an overview of the current state of the art with regard to the five main entities of our model, before we outline areas of future research to improve our understanding of search as learning processes. Copyright © 2022 von Hoyer, Hoppe, Kammerer, Otto, Pardi, Rokicki, Yu, Dietze, Ewerth and Holtz

Die fachspezifische Förderung digitaler Informationskompetenzen im Geographieunterricht - Grundlagen, Strategien und didaktische Unterstützung für Internetrecherchen zu geographischen Fragestellungen und darauf basierenden Argumentationen

Diese kumulative Dissertation besteht im Kern aus drei Teilstudien, in denen Erkenntnisse über die Kompetenzen von Lernenden bei der Erschließung und argumentativen Beantwortung geographischer Fragestellungen mit Hilfe von Internetrecherchen gewonnen werden. Basierend auf diesen Erkenntnissen wird ein didaktisches Unterstützungsinstrument zur Förderung diesbezüglicher Fähigkeiten entwickelt und auf seine Wirksamkeit überprüft. In Teilstudie 1 wird empirisch untersucht, über welche Kompetenzen Schüler*innen bei Internetrecherchen zu geographischen Fragestellungen verfügen, welchen Schwierigkeiten sie sich dabei gegenübersehen und welche Strategien sie anwenden. In Teilstudie 2 wird analysiert, inwiefern die Schüler*innen in der Lage sind, die gefundenen Informationen weiterzuverarbeiten und eine recherchierte Fragestellung argumentativ zu beantworten. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Schüler*innen bereits über grundlegende Fähigkeiten verfügen, relevante Informationen zu der gesuchten Fragestellung im Internet zu finden und ihre eigene Position zu einem Konflikt zu argumentieren. Schwächen zeigen sich bei der Internetrecherche unter anderem im Bereich der kritischen Evaluation der gefundenen Informationen und bei der Entnahme von raumbezogenen Informationen in Karten. Beim Verfassen der Argumentationen weisen die Schüler*innen insbesondere bei den Spezifika geographischer Argumentationen Defizite auf. Strukturierte Notizen nach Pro- und Kontraargumenten zeigen einen positiven Effekt, sowohl auf die Internetrecherche als auch auf die Argumentation. Basierend auf den in Teilstudie 1 und 2 gewonnenen Erkenntnissen wird ein didaktisches Unterstützungsinstrument in Form einer digitalen Lerneinheit entwickelt, dessen Wirksamkeit in Teilstudie 3 untersucht wird. Dabei kann festgestellt werden, dass die Teilnehmer*innen sich tiefer mit den recherchieren Informationen auseinandersetzten als die Vergleichsgruppe und die Qualität ihrer anschließenden Argumentation signifikant höher war. Die digitale Lerneinheit kann somit als Unterstützungsinstrument zur Förderung von Kompetenzen für Internetrecherchen zu geographischen Fragestellungen und anschließender Argumentation betrachtet werden

The relationship between task complexity, working memory and information search

In recent years, there has been growing interest in better understanding human actors in human information seeking behavior studies. Although a number of studies have been conducted to explore users’ individual differences in search behavior, there have been few studies taking both a theoretical and empirical approach to the relationship between users’ cognitive ability, task complexity and search interactions. The study presented in this paper evaluated the effect of task complexity and working memory in human information searching behavior. Twenty-four participants from a non-college-bound adolescents sample (ages 18-50+) performed two search tasks of varying levels of complexity and were administered measures of working memory. ANOVA tests revealed three important trends: (1) task complexity had a significant main effect on users’ perceptions about the task (i.e., temporal demand and level of satisfaction with time spent on the task), (2) working memory capacity had a significant main effect on users’ search behavior (i.e., queries, clicks, time until 1st click and time between search activities), and (3) a significant interaction effect was found for several search interaction measures (i.e., queries, clicks and time between search activities) and perceived level of temporal demand. Specifically, participants with high working memory capacity carried out more search activities at a faster pace and experienced less temporal workload. Taken together, these results suggest that task complexity and working memory capacity can have effects on users’ search behavior as well as their perceptions about the search experience.Master of Science in Information Scienc