Developing effective Web-based information seeking for inquiry-based learning: a meta-cognitive approach

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1. Inquiry-based learning is becoming increasingly recognised as an important mode of education at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Web-based information seeking is a vital aspect of inquiry-based learning. This project aims to improve the effectiveness with which undergraduate and postgraduate students engage in Web-based information seeking to support their inquiry-based research, for projects and dissertations. 2. The project will devise a series of strategies for helping people improve their Web-based information seeking. The strategies we will use are designed to increase people's level of 'meta-cognition', which will be described in more detail in paragraph 6 below. The effectiveness of these strategies will then be statistically tested (using a control group) by more than 180 undergraduate and postgraduate students, who will engage in a series of controlled searches. Effectiveness will be measured in terms of changes, resulting from the use of the strategies, in their Web-searching strategies and outcomes. Outcomes will be assessed in terms of the relevance of the information they actually find. We will also assess qualitative differences in the search strategies they use. 3. This statistical work will be complemented by in-depth research in which we will follow the activities of undergraduate students engaged in their undergraduate research-based project, and Masters students engaged in the preparation of a research-based dissertation. The students will keep detailed diaries of their information seeking activities, generate 'mind maps' of their research problem and related information needs, and be interviewed in depth over a protracted period of time as they engage in information seeking in the context of their research.4. One may wonder why this is necessary, with search engines like Google apparently being so effective. Indeed, much research has focused developing ever 'smarter' search engines. Smart techniques designed to make searching more effective even for people without much skill / or level of meta-cognition / include so-called 'best-match' and 'Boolean' search facilities, automatic 'query expansion' whereby additional keywords are offered to the searcher based on clever algorithms which analyse the co-occurrence of terms in their indexes, and 'search narrowing' facilities allowing, for example, progressive searching within previous search results.5. However, the extent to which the 'smartness' of a search engine can replace the need for 'smartness' on the part of the human searcher is at best questionable. This need really 'kicks in' as information needs get more complex. Do a simple search for something quite specific and Google will do an excellent job at quickly finding relevant information. But in the real world of inquiry-based learning, 'information needs' may be rather more complex and less easy to define / especially when students are taking an ever-greater role in determining the actual research questions at the heart of their inquiry-based projects or dissertations, as well as determining for themselves how and where they search for information. This is where 'meta-cognition' comes into play. 6. 'Meta-cognition' is all about people's ability to manage their own learning and problem-solving / basically, reasoning about and actively managing (monitoring, evaluating and improving) one's own thinking. This ability may be used to maximize one's intellectual potential. There has been a lot of research on the role of meta-cognition in learning and problem-solving, and relatively recently there has been a growing volume of research into the use of meta-cognition in relation to both inquiry-based learning and specifically information seeking. We will use a blend of statistical and qualitative research approaches to investigate ways in which we can help people improve their information seeking by improving their meta-cognitive knowledge and skills.