Completion strategy or emphasis manipulation? Task support for teaching information problem solving

While most students seem to solve information problems effortlessly, research shows that the cognitive skills for effective information problem solving are often underdeveloped. Students manage to find information and formulate solutions, but the quality of their process and product is questionable. It is therefore important to develop instruction for fostering these skills. In this research, a 2-h online intervention was presented to first-year university students with the goal to improve their information problem solving skills while investigating effects of different types of built-in task support. A training design containing completion tasks was compared to a design using emphasis manipulation. A third variant of the training combined both approaches. In two experiments, these conditions were compared to a control condition receiving conventional tasks without built-in task support. Results of both experiments show that students' information problem solving skills are underdeveloped, which underlines the necessity for formal training. While the intervention improved students’ skills, no differences were found between conditions. The authors hypothesize that the effective presentation of supportive information in the form of a modeling example at the start of the training caused a strong learning effect, which masked effects of task support. Limitations and directions for future research are presented

To tag or not to tag? How to support organizing and classifying bookmarks from the Web / & xbf;Con etiquetas o sin etiquetas? Como asistir en la organizacion y clasificacion de los marcadores de paginas Web:How to support organizing and classifying bookmarks from the Web (Cómo asistir en la organización y clasificación de los marcadores de páginas Web)

Título, resumen y palabras clave también en inglésResumen basado en el de la publicaciónTras una búsqueda de información en Internet, ésta se puede almacenar en un sistema de marcadores. La capacidad de organizar la información en algún tipo de sistema depende de los conocimientos previos para poder crear un plan de clasificación apropiado. La disponibilidad de un sistema de clasificación de marcadores podría ayudar a las personas con escasos conocimientos previos. Aunque existen distintos sistemas de marcadores, los menús jerárquicos y las etiquetas son los más utilizados. Con 95 estudiantes de Grado 9 (14-15 años), se aplica un diseño de investigación inter sujeto 2 × 2 para analizar la influencia de la disponibilidad (o no disponibilidad) de un sistema de clasificación propuesto para etiquetar o clasificar jerárquicamente los marcadores.Biblioteca del Ministerio de Educación y Formación Profesional; Calle San Agustín, 5 - 3 planta; 28014 Madrid; Tel. +34917748000; [email protected]

Embedded instruction to learn information problem solving:effects of a whole task approach

Abstract In contemporary education, students often need to use the Internet to find information for solving a problem and completing a learning task. Teachers assume that students are sufficiently skilled to do so, but research shows the skills necessary for effective information problem solving (IPS) are more often than not underdeveloped. This paper presents a study on embedded IPS training consisting of whole IPS tasks integrated in a 20-week course on vocabulary development, and its effects on student teachers’ IPS skills. Skill measurements show that student teachers receiving the training search and select information more systematically in the short term, but their search queries, sources, and solutions are not of significantly higher quality than those of student teachers who received the regular course without IPS training. In addition, the improvements were no longer visible after five weeks. The training therefore succeeded in developing cognitive strategies for approaching an information problem, but did not create lasting improvements in all aspects of the IPS skill. Methodological and practical implications are discussed

Dealing with conflicting information from multiple nonlinear texts: Effects of prior attitudes

This study investigated the effects of prior attitudes on how students deal with conflicting information in multiple nonlinear texts. Sixty-one Dutch 11th grade students read multiple texts on a controversial topic and wrote a short essay on it. These essays were scored on perspective taken and the origin of information included in them. Ordinal regression analysis showed that students with strong prior attitudes were significantly more likely to write essays that were biased towards their prior attitudes. Furthermore, multiple regression analyses revealed that students with strong attitudes took explicit stances and added large proportions of information not presented in the reading materials in their essays, whereas students with neutral attitudes wrote syntheses and borrowed more information from the materials. Overall, results show that prior attitudes can bias how students deal with conflicting information in an open-ended reading and writing task