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

Embedded Information Problem-Solving Instruction to Foster Learning from Digital Sources: Longitudinal Effects on Task Performance

“…Research shows that teenagers have problems when they reach the stage of formulating questions [18], clarifying task requirements, activating prior knowledge and determining what information needs searching [16]. In addition, very few students start searching with a prior reflection on the task at hand and clear outlining of their search [10,19,20].…”

“…It is often claimed that IPS skills are underdeveloped or absent without explicit instruction, even among "digital natives" [1,[3][4][5][6]16]. However, educational research shows that students can be instructed to better define the problem and the information needed, generate more relevant search queries, adopt more evaluation criteria, select higher quality resources and deeply process and present information to answer an informational problem [10,25].…”

“…Over recent decades, much effort has been made to investigate efficient instructional approaches for IPS and incorporate effective support for guiding students' activity in searching, retrieving, evaluating and integrating information from multiple web sources (e.g., [3,4,[10][11][12][13]16,30]). However, despite the researchers' efforts made so far, their attempts have proved insufficient and further research is still needed in order to face and shed light on how formal IPS skills training could be designed in order to have a positive impact on students' learning.…”

“…Whole-task instruction proposes the resolution of ill-structured, authentic and complex real-life situations in which students have to perform all the steps of the IPS process, from beginning to end, and students can find different ways to solve the task. Whole-task instruction has proved to be more effective to teach IPS complex skills than part-task fragmented instruction [10,14]. Whole-task instruction offers the possibility to provide support for all the IPS skills and practice them as a whole process in which one skill relates to and impacts on the others.…”

“…In recent years, research has been carried out to analyse the effectiveness of teaching IPS using the internet, e.g., [10][11][12][13]. However, further research is still needed to tailor the existing IPS models to specific groups of students and in specific learning contexts [3,9] and, by so doing, promote quality and sustainable education for all students.…”