Abstract

The E-learning Action Plan (European Commission, 2000) is a European educational objective that uses the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and the internet to improve the learning quality. For this reason, the main goal of this study is to explore the educational use of the internet as a learning tool in Secondary School. To sum up, the focus of this study is the relationship between the language and the cognitive, metacognitive and social processes involved when students work in pairs to solve a computer-based activity. The design is quasi-experimental (using pre-test, intervention and post-test): students need to solve one computer-based activity on a scientific topic (planet Mars) without previous intervention; after the intervention they need to solve another equivalent computer-based activity on another scientific topic (the Moon). The intervention responds to a design computer-based instructional environments learning: 9 activity-projects using the WebQuest methodology (Dodge, 1995). These environments are based on authentic problems, inquiry web-learning and scaffolded procedures. The sample comprises 18 students working in pairs in the 4th level of Secondary School (15-16 years of age) of three different educational institutions of Lleida (Spain). Two institutions were selected randomly as experimental groups while the third one was taken as the control group. The data collected consist of both video recording and the actions students carried out on the screen (CamStudio 2.0) during the task-solving process. The video recording of each group (6 experimental pairs and 3 control pairs) was analysed by means of conversation analysis. The results show that more often than not students fail to solve the task with a truthful collaborative interaction. We therefore conclude that it is necessary to design a training process for the students to work collaboratively.