IT 695 Week 4 (Pt.3)

Study I Found:

Walraven, Amber, Brand-Gruwel, Saskia, & Boshuizen, Henny P. A. (2009). How students evaluate information and sources when searching the World Wide Web for information. Computers & Education. 52, 234-246.

Participants:

23 ninth grade students in the Netherlands; 8 male, 15 female

Method:

Students completed a questionnaire to determine their beliefs for and comfort using the web
The students were then asked to complete 4-6 of the tasks while thinking aloud; video cameras and screen capture software were employed. Questions were "fourth level" tasks created by their teachers, requiring students to perform higher level thinking. Usable key words were not given in the questions, and the number of responses was not specified.

The transcript for each task was provided to students in a second meeting, and they were asked to report why they had used or rejected certain sites. Transcripts were also coded and interpreted for constituent skills (define problem, search information, scan information, process information, and organize/present information). These were also broken down into subskills.

Findings:

Students spent 44% of their time searching, 31% scanning information, 16% processing, and 9% organizing information. Students switched frequently between constituent skills and followed a cycle of "search-scan-process-organize-search" in which the searching and scanning phases consisted of visiting multiple sites. Additionally, students did not spend time evaluating the sources for information, focusing instead on speed (slow-loading sites were quickly rejected) and content.

Interpretation:

I was not surprised by the findings that students spend most of their time searching for information and significantly less processing what they find. We use the internet to find answers to questions, and (I think someone in class said this) if we find the right answer, does it really matter where we found it? If the question is "How do I fix the password I screwed up in Ubuntu", then probably the source is unimportant as long as I get the password fixed. But for research questions and information problems, in many cases it really does matter. The question that I struggle with is how to teach my students quick and useful criteria for considering sources even before they scan the content. And, given the findings here, quick is one of the important factors!