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How Children See the Web: A Case Study of Grade-Six Students: 

How Children See the Web: A Case Study of Grade-Six Students Andrew Large McGill University

The Web as a school learning resource: 

The Web as a school learning resource Access from school/classroom Specialized sites Specialized portals Incorporation into information-seeking activities of elementary school students

Effectiveness of Web as a Learning Resource: 

Effectiveness of Web as a Learning Resource How successful is the Web at supplying students with the kind of information needed to complete class assignments? Is the right kind of information available on the Web? Can the students locate that information? Can the they evaluate the information?

And more particularly…: 

And more particularly… How do the students themselves rate the Web as a source of information for class assignments?

Methodology: 

Methodology 53 grade-six students (11-12years” old) from one suburban elementary school Three workstations with color printers installed in classroom Students worked in groups of 2 or 3 Twice-weekly search sessions from mid-March to early May Search sessions around 30 minutes 20 groups, 78 search sessions, 50 connect hours

Methodology: 

Methodology The Assignment Each student to produce a poster and make a class presentation on one of the sports represented at the Winter 1998 Olympic Games in Nagano, Japan Training sessions – class & individual

Exit Interviews: 

Exit Interviews Each students asked a series of open-ended questions about: Information-seeking Information content Frustrations Web compared with print as information source

Information seeking: 

Information seeking Almost all students admitted to problems in looking for information Although browsing was widely used, students had few comments on it Had much more to say about using search engines

Searching the Web: 

Searching the Web Term selection troubled many – difficult to express information needs by keywords Most search strings comprised multiple rather than single words But very few students employed full sentence structures

Term selection: 

Term selection Searches tended to be too general “If you were to type in times, it would give me like times from all over the world. If I put Nagano, it would give me Nagano the place and all those other things. It was really frustrating.” Some term rotation within search phrase (half-pipe snowboarding, snowboarding half-pipe) But also multiple search repetition

Search features: 

Search features AltaVista and Infoseek default to OR Introduced to AND, capitalization of first letter, quotations for phrase searching Only quotations used to any extent And this usage was widely misunderstood (“olympics ice dancing”)

Search frustrations: 

Search frustrations Difficult to find a few highly relevant pages - often retrieved pages containing “useless information”. Unreliability of page titles/descriptions Slowness BUT - few problems with misspellings of search terms - group work

Web versus Print: for the Web: 

Web versus Print: for the Web Accessibility - saved time in visiting library; difficulty of finding books in library - on loan, wrongly shelved, not in collection. Speed (39 students out of 50 thought it faster to search on the Web).

Web versus Print: for Print: 

Web versus Print: for Print A minority preferred searching print sources Books faster - easier to find the right page - “you just have to look in alphabetical order. Books are in alphabetical order.”

Information Content: 

Information Content Most of the Web pages visited were not prepared specifically for elementary school students. The students were used to consulting print sources targeted at their age group. So the students may have to translate the content into their own syntax and vocabulary - information not packaged for them. Very few students commented upon authority of Web content

Multimedia : 

Multimedia Web as a source of still images, moving images and sound. Still images widely captured and included on posters - mean of 5 images per poster. Images made posters more attractive, and used up space - but less favored than text as a way of presenting information. But little use of video or sound clips.

Web versus Print: 

Web versus Print Many students preferred Web because it contained more relevant information. But many students missed the specificity and precision of print-based information: “once you find the book that you’re looking for and it has like all the stuff, it won’t mix in anything that you don’t need.” Some students appreciated that decision depended on subject area.

Observations: 

Observations Grade-six students are sophisticated information seekers and users - were able to compare Web with print. Technophiles, Traditionalists, Techo-Trads. Students were more familiar with print - for many Web was a new information resource. Information seeking was not intuitive - problems in choosing between searching and browsing, navigating, selecting search terms, modifying strategies, etc.

Conclusions: 

Conclusions Students require assistance in information seeking - more training or more helpful interface Students require guidance on site selection - either from teacher or from interface Multimedia content requires multimedia class assignments

Current research: 

Current research Evaluating 4 student-targeted portals using focus groups Designing a prototype portal