Asbtract

Strategies used by adolescent learners to search, comprehend and integrate web information in order to solve learning tasks were studied in this paper. Sixty-eight students of 2nd year of secondary education (13-14 year old) participated in the study. All of them solved individually a curricular activity using the World Wide Web. Quantitative analyses of students’ answers were performed in both success and quality. Besides, qualitative analyses were conducted with ten students. With this purpose, all their actions on the computer were taped using screen cam software. Three different mechanisms were analysed in detail during students’ resolution process: a) web searching effectiveness; b) web searching behaviour –searching strategies, use of the search engine’s potential, mouse actions and c) cognitive strategies to use web information to fulfil instructional activity: strategies to read web information, strategies to select web information and strategies to integrate web information.

Results showed low students’ success in solving the curricular tasks. Four major findings related to web searching and to use of web information strategies are discussed: a) students search for information on the web was data-driven orientated; b) no planning strategies were used by students to search for information on the web; c) students did not take full advantage of searching engines’ potential, overlooking the “refine” and “broaden” commands; not using Boolean operators and failing to select right key words and d) students did not integrate web information found in Internet, the most common strategy used by students to answer the curricular questions proposed in the task was “copy and paste”.

Our study highlighted some difficulties of secondary students in using Internet as a learning tool and the necessity to generate instructional environments for integrating the World Wide Web as a learning tool in the curriculum. From our point of view, the design of these instructional environments need to take into account the next four educational variables: a) design instructional activities to take full advantage of searching engines’ potential: key words selection, use of Boolean operators and strategies to refine the search; b) Identify specific skills, procedures and strategies for searching and managerial web information for learning purposes; c) design procedural guidelines for the instructional activity and develop scaffolded instructional activities to support more effective Internet searching and managerial information strategies to solve different types of curricular tasks and d) study how to integrate the use of Internet to learn curricular contents.