Learning to use the Internet as a study tool: a review of available resources and exploration of students' priorities

Background: The Internet is a valuable information tool, but users often struggle to locate good quality information from within the vast amount of information available. Objectives: The aim of the study was to identify the online information resources available to assist students develop Internet searching skills, and to explore the students' priorities in online guides. Methods: A qualitative approach was adopted with two phases. The first was a structured search of available online study skills resources. The second comprised 10 group interviews with a total of 60 students at all stages of five undergraduate health and social care related courses at a UK university. Results: The study found that there were good online guides available, but that, perversely, the better guides tended to require the best searching skills to locate them. A few students were enthusiastic about using online support, however the majority felt that if they had the skills to locate such resources they wouldn't use a study guide to improve these skills, and if they did not have the skills they would not think of using an online guide to develop them. Conclusions: Students wanted assistance when they had problems or questions, rather than sites that offered structured learning experiences. Personal support rather than virtual support was also considered to be most important to the students in this study

Student reactions to online tools for learning to use the Internet as a study tool: outside the comfort zone?

The Internet is a valuable source of health related information, however students are not maximising their use of this resource. A study was undertaken to see what resources were already available to help them develop the necessary skills, and to identify the elements of an Internet study guide that were of importance to the students. An extensive search of the Internet, using a variety of search terms in Google and Yahoo located numerous study support sites. Ten focus groups were held with a total of 60 students on a variety of health and social care related courses at an English university. Rather than finding what the students were looking for in an online study guide the research found that using an online support system took the majority of students outside of their comfort zone, resulting in them rejecting online support and expressing a preference for personal or hard copy support and materials. The way online materials are structured into courses is explored as a possible reason for these difficulties and a flow chart to help students identify resources is presented

Hypermedia learning and prior knowledge: Domain expertise vs. system expertise

Prior knowledge is often argued to be an important determinant in hypermedia learning, and may be thought of as including two important elements: domain expertise and system expertise. However, there has been a lack of research considering these issues together. In an attempt to address this shortcoming, this paper presents a study that examines how domain expertise and system expertise influence students’ learning performance in, and perceptions of, a hypermedia system. The results indicate that participants with lower domain knowledge show a greater improvement in their learning performance than those with higher domain knowledge. Furthermore, those who enjoy using the Web more are likely to have positive perceptions of non-linear interaction. Discussions on how to accommodate the different needs of students with varying levels of prior knowledge are provided based on the results

Inquiry web-based learning to enhance information problem solving competences in science

Early research on using web information indicates that secondary students fail to explore much web tools, use them naively and have serious difficulties to understand and integrate web information. In response to these challenges, the main goal of this research has been to design, implement and evaluate an instructional approach that helps students learn from web information. We have developed on-line learning materials which focus on specific curricular contents and provide specific scaffolds to help students accomplish web-based tasks and develop specific information problem-solving competencies. These scaffolds have intended to give support to students involved in information-seeking activities as they were asked questions, searched for information, organised and assessed their findings, and created rich representations of their newly-constructed understandings. We have designed a one year long study to investigate the depth and accuracy of 127 secondary students, as regards their content understanding as well as their development of information problem-solving competencies when using on-line resources to solve instructional tasks. Our research demonstrates that the experimental group performed computer-based activities statistically better than the control group. Our findings also suggest that students were able to develop accurate and in-depth understanding from web information if they could appropriately use search and managerial strategies. This research lends evidence to questions regarding the value of students engaging in on-line inquiry web-based learning to enhance content understanding and to develop more efficient information problem-solving competencies in secondary education

Instructional Support for Enhancing Students’ Information Problem Solving Ability

Brand-Gruwel, S., & Gerjets, P. (Eds.). (2008). Instructional Support for Enhancing Students’ Information Problem Solving Ability [Special issue]. Computers in Human Behavior, 24(3).This special issue discusses European research on instructional support to foster students’ ability to solve information-based problems. In this introduction, the concept of information problem solving (IPS) and research in this field of interest will be placed in the broader perspective, which is called information behavior. The focus of this special issue is an educational one and the papers all go into a specific kind of instructional support. The main research questions, findings and conclusions of the six contributions will be outlined. It is concluded that the most important directions for future research deal with how instructional support for different aspect of the process, like for instance how to regulated the process, best can be designed in order to make the instruction adaptive and fit to the learners needs

Approfondimento storico e nuove tecnologie: il laboratorio didattico "Noi e gli Altri"

The paper describes the experience and results of the teaching laboratory "Us" and the "Others", organized by two Institutes of the CNR, the Institute of History of Mediterranean Europe, located in Cagliari, and the Institute for Educational Technology, during the Genoa Science Festival 2010. The laboratory was designed by researchers to offer students of lower and upper-secondary school the opportunity to experience historical research on the Internet and to encourage reflection on what are the advantages and limitations of the information problem solving process while using Internet. The learning goal was to familiarize students with different information resources and search techniques, as well as to help them establishing the reliability of the information source. At the end of each session, students were asked to fill out a questionnaire describing the strategy adopted for searching, processing and selecting reliable information. Preliminary results are briefly presented here.Il contributo descrive l\u27esperienza e i risultati del laboratorio "Noi e gli altri", organizzato da due Istituti del CNR, l\u27Istituto di Storia dell\u27Europa Mediterranea di Cagliari e l\u27Istituto per le Tecnologie Didattiche di Genova, nell\u27ambito del Festival della Scienza. Il laboratorio ? stato pensato dai ricercatori per offrire agli studenti di scuola secondaria di primo e secondo grado l\u27opportunit? di fare un\u27esperienza di ricerca storica su Internet e per favorire una riflessione su quali siano i vantaggi e i limiti della ricerca di informazioni in Rete. Le attivit? proposte nel laboratorio sono state strutturate in modo da stimolare nei ragazzi la capacit? di affrontare la ricerca di informazioni in Rete in maniera attiva e critica in un ottica di problem solving. I processi di ricerca degli studenti sono stati monitorati dai ricercatori mediante questionari compilati alla conclusione delle sessioni di lavoro, allo scopo di approfondire i comportamenti dei ragazzi in relazione alla ricerca e all\u27analisi delle informazioni. I dati sono stati raccolti ed elaborati e i risultati vengono qui brevemente presentati