This empirical study consists in an investigation of the effects, on the development of Information Problem Solving (IPS) skills, of a long-term embedded, structured and supported instruction in Secondary Education. Forty secondary students of 7 th and 8 th grades (13 to 15 years old) participated in the two-year IPS instruction designed in this study. Twenty of them participated in the IPS instruction, and the remaining twenty were the control group. All the students were pre-and post-tested in their regular classrooms, and their IPS process and performance were logged by means of screen capture software, to warrant their ecological validity. The IPS constituent skills, the web search sub-skills and the answers given by each participant were analyzed. The main findings of our study suggested that experimental students showed a more expert pattern than the control students regarding the constituent skill 'defining the problem' and the following two web search sub-skills: 'search terms' typed in a search engine, and 'selected results' from a SERP. In addition, scores of task performance were statistically better in experimental students than in control group students. The paper contributes to the discussion of how well-designed and well-embedded scaffolds could be designed in instructional programs in order to guarantee the development and efficiency of the students' IPS skills by using net information better and participating fully in the global knowledge society.

This paper studies how the integration of group awareness tools in the knowledge management system called KnowCat (Knowledge Catalyser), which promotes collaborative knowledge construction, may both foster the students' perception about the meaningfulness of visualization of group awareness information and promote better collaborative processes as well as enhance better task performance. Forty-seven university students participated in a research study, where one group of 23 students used KnowCat without the awareness console (non-awareness group); the other 24 students used KnowCat with the awareness console (awareness group). Both groups used KnowCat during one semester. Data analysis revealed that the awareness group means were higher than those of the non-awareness group in terms of participation, cognitive and metacognitive learning activities, and task performance. Moreover, students revealed that knowing what, where and how much their classmates were contributing acted as positive feedback by encouraging participation and orienting their own behaviour and their contribution to the collaborative work. In this paper, we claim that the visualization group awareness information in KnowCat, a utility allowing students to visualize and track what, where, how much and how often other participants contributed to the KnowCat knowledge area, had a positive impact on the students' collaborative behaviour.

The use of the Internet to learn involves complex cognitive activities. Educational researchers claim more attention in studying the nature of students’ challenges when using digital information for learning purposes. Our research investigated in depth the challenges that secondary students face when solving web information-problem tasks. We thoroughly analysed how forty secondary students (18 girls and 22 boys) solved a scholar task using web information. The students’ actions on the computer screen were logged. Findings showed specific difficulties in solving digital tasks due to when (1) typing appropriate search terms, and when (2) selecting reliable and useful results from a “search engine results page”, which hinders the correct finding and understanding of web information needed to solve the digital task. In addition, the participants had a lack of reflection regarding the different actions to solve the digital task. Furthermore, our findings revealed that gender was not associated with differences in digital attainment.

Internet has become one of the most important information sources for students' personal and academic life. In addition, the World Wide Web is receiving increased attention in education because of its potential to support new forms of learning. However, using the information from the net for learning requires the development of a set of abilities such as searching and tackling information from the Internet to find solutions of a problem-this set of abilities is called Information-Problem Solving (IPS) skills. The main objectives of this study are the following three: first, to provide a detailed description about how secondary students solve an IPS task; second, to identify key IPS skills, sub-skills, and regulation activities that have more incidence upon students' success to solve a problem using digital information on the Web; and third, to use this information to draw educative guidelines to design web-based instructional process and foster IPS in secondary classrooms. In-depth analyses of quantitative and qualitative data of a multi-case study allowed us to identify distinctive patterns and sequences of IPS skills used by students to solve a task. Furthermore, IPS skills (defining the problem and search for information), sub-skills (specifying search terms and selecting results from a SERP), and regulation activities (orientation on the task, monitoring, and testing) were identified as key skills which have more incidence in students to solve successfully IPS tasks to learn curricular contents at school.

No abstract