Improving Information Problem Solving skills in Secondary Education through embedded instruction

Abstract

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.

Completion strategy or emphasis manipulation? Task support for teaching information problem solving

“…To achieve far transfer, students would benefit from more learning tasks: more practice with varying task demands and task complexity, yet without added time pressure. An embedded approach, where instructional designers combine IPS instruction with domainspecific instruction in an extensive curriculum, appears appropriate for this task (Argelagós & Pifarré, 2012;Wopereis, Brand-Gruwel, & Vermetten, 2008).…”

Key Information-Problem Solving Skills to Learn in Secondary Education: A Qualitative, Multi-Case Study

“…The six participants of this study were randomly selected from a larger study of forty students; the reader can find more details of this larger study in Argelagós and Pifarré (2012). The participants for this paper were three representative cases of unsuccessful IPS (Axel, Pam, and Peter), and three representative cases of successful IPS (Ashley, Miriam, and Moses).…”

Detangling the Interrelationships Between Self-Regulation and Ill-Structured Problem Solving in Problem-Based Learning

“…Problem representation plays an instrumental role in solution planning. For example, in the context of IPS, planning for appropriate query terms hinges on an adequate understanding of the problem (Argelagós & Pifarré, 2012).…”

“…In addition to returning from the execution to the planning phase upon reflection in the solution stage, learners may also return to the problem representation stage to adjust their mental representations of the problem (Argelagós & Pifarré, 2012), which is indicated by the longer red dotted-line arrow in Figure 1. Even in the final stage of IPS-information organization and presentation-the learner may still revisit the problem representation stage in an effort to align the compiled response or presentation with the task requirements (Argelagós & Pifarré, 2012).…”

“…Even in the final stage of IPS-information organization and presentation-the learner may still revisit the problem representation stage in an effort to align the compiled response or presentation with the task requirements (Argelagós & Pifarré, 2012). From time to time in historical inquiry, learners may need to go back to the original document to reevaluate inquiry questions, identify additional pieces of information that may enrich the problem representation, or even formulate new problem representations.…”