How high-school students find and evaluate scientific information: A basis for information literacy skills development

Fostering students’ evaluation behaviour while searching the internet

“…Focus of the students was still more on product, than on process. This is also found in a study by Julien and Barker (2009). Despite specific questions addressing the process of their search task (comparable with the process worksheets in our study), 11th and 12th grade students found it hard to recall their actions and choices, similar to our students who tried to fill out the sheets after the assignment.…”

“…That the program was not executed according to plan is confirmed by the teachers who mentioned that the execution of this second program was more difficult than the execution of the first program. Julien and Barker (2009) also showed that having an explicit curriculum 'which explicates sound information searching skills, is clearly insufficient to ensure that students are learning these skills' (p. 15). Although Julien and Barker did not explore actual classroom practices, they suggest that teachers may believe that students learn these skills on their own, or teachers lack skills themselves and are unable to teach it.…”

Students’ Perception and Habits in Choosing Online Literature Sources for Seminar Papers

“…Researchers have shown that a majority of students predominantly use the Internet as the source for their class assignments (Barranoik [1], Jones [10], Julien and Barker [11], Chang et al [4]). At the same time, students are quite uncritical of the information they find on web pages.…”

“…Their evaluative criteria included both relevant and non-relevant (e.g. superficial aesthetic features) information selection, majority of them tend to assess the relevance of information on the basis of easy access and fail to cite sources appropriately (Barranoik [1], Fidel, et al [5] Brem, Russell and Weems [3], Branch [2], Metzger, Flanagin, and Zwarun [14], Heinström [7], Julien and Barker [11], Halverson et al [6]). …”

Croatian ESP vocational high school pupils and university students’ habits of using online sources

“…al., 1999;Grimer & Boening, 2001;Jones & Madden, 2002;Metzger, Flanagin & Zwarun, 2003, Frazer, 2010. Studies about vocational high school pupils and university students' IL suggest they prefer online sources over printed ones, but also that they have difficulties evaluating found information and they have poor searching skills (for a literature review, see Julien & Barker, 2009). Although most of them started to use the Internet early and are heavy and capable users of it (Jones & Madden, 2002), their processing of information is superficial and aims at the quantity of the data and not the quality and critical explanation which are bases for meaningful, deep and true learning (Lubans, 1999;Metzger, Flanagin & Zwarun, 2003).…”