Presentation at Literacy Research Association, Nashville 2016

1. Colin Harrison
Learning Sciences Research Institute /
School of Education
University of Nottingham
Understanding
Internet Search and Evaluation Strategies
During Fifth Graders’ Group Work

2. Coiro, J., Knobel, M., Lankshear, C., & Leu, D.
J. (Eds.). (2014). Handbook of research on
new literacies. Routledge.
Harrison, C., Dwyer, B., & Castek, J.
(2014). Using technology to improve reading
and learning. Shell Education, California,
USA.

3. New skills and strategies for critical
literacy in a post-typographical world
 What are the ‘new skills and strategies’?
 Who says we need them?
The British
Library:
25 million
books
The Internet:
A room with
2.5 billion
doors

4. PEN-CIL
Plan Evaluate Navigate- Critical Internet Literacy
Internet research triads: Constructive goal-setting, collaboration and mutual support
 PLANNER- what’s our task? where should we go, and what should we do when we get there?
 Select evidence: Copy / move / change / delete?
 Summarise source
 Synthesise across sources
 NAVIGATOR- how do we get there?
 Select good search terms
 Evaluate URL possibilities
 Evaluate URL appropriateness on landing
 Look for key words
 EVALUATOR- are we there yet?
 Are we understanding?
 Language too difficult?
 Do we trust this source? If so, why?
 Are we answering our research question?
Tasks developed in collaboration with Bernadette Dwyer (2010)
and Shiri Einav (UoN) Thank you!

5. PEN-CIL Task:
‘How many stars can you see in the sky?’

6. PEN-CIL Stars sites

7. PEN-CIL Study ‘How many stars can you see in the
sky?’
• Answer the research question, using information from the six sites
• Give a score 1-6: How relevant is the information on this site?
• Give a score 1-6: How much do you trust the information on this site?
- Seven triads of students (mean age 11.6)
- 25 minutes to carry out the task
- Audio recording of the group conversation
- Reminder after 10 minutes to look again at the research question
175-minute/26,500-word corpus
Effective research strategies?
Less effective research strategies?
The task:
Data collection:

8. PEN-CIL Study ECER 2015 presentation
Skill area Tactic Undesirable Desirable
Internet reading
strategies
Read task carefully Proceed with poor
understanding of task
Proceed with good
understanding of task
Read text fully Read every word aloud ‘Let’s skim’
Neglect to scroll down Scroll down and read all of
the text
Be alert/suspicious Attracted to eye candy Mistrust advertisements
Fail to consider author’s
purpose
Mistrust over-friendly tone
Comprehension/inference Read between the lines Fail to monitor
comprehension
Monitor individual and group
comprehension
Make premature decisions Make late decisions
Fail to integrate information
across source(s)
Integrate information across
source(s)
Group processes Collaboration P-E-N Roles not clear P-E-N Roles clear
Fail to fulfill roles Fulfill roles
Ignore opinions of other
group members
Make joint decisions on
relevance and
trustworthiness

9. PEN-CIL Study LRA 2016 Re-analysis of discourse
data
Vygotsky: learning as a socio-cognitive phenomenon
Learning = = obuchenie
- learning
- education
Obuchenie = - teaching
- studying
- nurture
Neil Mercer: learning as a dialogic process
Learner + learner + learner = unreflective,
uncooperative talk
Learner + learner+ learner
+ explicit aims
+ ‘ground rules’ for talk = ‘Inter-thinking’
- critical, constructive talk
- collaborative problem solving
- knowledge creation
2015

10. PEN-CIL Study
ECER 2015 presentation
PEN-CIL Study
LRA 2016 presentation
Skill area Desirable Discourse marker Dialogic Inter-thinking
Skill area Tactic Undesirable Desirable

11. Skill area Desirable Discourse
marker
Dialogic Inter-thinking
Internet
reading
strategies
Strategic
reading
Chloe: ‘Shall
we, like, skim
read and see if
we can find
anything?’
Jessica: “Let’s just look and see if it answers our
question, because our question is ‘How many stars can
we see in the sky?’ So we don’t just have to look for the
biggest amount of numbers.”
Hannah: “Yes, let’s just skim read it…”
Cautious
reading-
considering
provenance,
language and
aims of web
site
Cameron:
“Already I don’t
trust this
website-
because
anyone can put
anything on it.”
Chloe: “Why are there cars [on this website]?”
Jessica: [on the car advertisements] – “I don’t trust it…
They’re just trying to get money out of the website.’
Hannah: “It’s relevant- but this is just blah-de-blah. I
don’t trust it at all. Because the language they use is
like I would talk to Jessica or you guys on the
playground.”
Paige: “It’s
trying to sound
like it’s your
friend. this is
just blah-di-
blah.”
Chelsie: “This one is concise; the other one has got
larger words and stuff; so I trust this one.”
Olivia: “Sky and Telescope did have the most scientific
language…but the best way to get information is to look
it up in a book.”
Logan: “Wikipedia gave really really good content- but it
was so irrelevant.”
Olivia: “ Yeah- it was nothing that we could use.”
Logan: “If you’re doing your project, and you copy it all
from Wikipedia, you probably won’t get any marks.”

12. Skill
area
Desir-
able
Discourse marker Dialogic Inter-thinking
Compre-
hension/in
ference
Clarify/su
mmarise
content
Chloe: ’I don’t think it’s
relevant because it
doesn’t say how many
stars there are.”
Chelsie: “We don’t need to know that!”[ie it’s
irrelevant; repeats research question]
Olivia: “maybe it’s a bit more relevant, but it
doesn’t say what we want it to say.’
Logan ”I trust it but the relevance of the web site
is low.”
Monitorin
g own and
others’
compre-
hension
Hildegard: “Are you actually taking any of this in?“
Amie: “No!”
Amie: “But this is all about stars, not about how
many you can see-“
Hildergard: “Exactly.”
Return to
reconside
r key
areas
Lucy: “Let’s look at them
all again. … we need to
go on the one we trust
most and look at that
again.”
Hannah: “Lets go back and look at the positives
and negatives about them. This one you can tell
it’s real because it’s got a caption below the
picture.”
Chloe: “Yeah.”
Hannah: “And you know the other web site, some
web sites just want you to ‘like’ them on
Facebook.”

13. Skill
area
Desirable Discourse
marker
Dialogic Inter-thinking
Group
pro-
cesses
Role
clarification
Amie: “I’m the Evaluator, so I'm trying to see that
we’re doing the right thing.”
Lawrence: “I’m the navigator and you’re the
planner…”
Hildegard: “I’m supposed to be telling you guys
what to do.”
Collabor-
ation
Logan: ”We’ve got to
work together… ‘cos
working together is key
to answering the
question.”
Ben: “It’s probably the best one [site] we’ve seen so
far…”
Lucas: ” Hmm… but none of them have been really
accurate, because…”
Chelsie: “Let’s go back and look at the positives and
negatives about them. This one you can tell it’s real
because it’s got a caption below the picture.”
Olivia: “Yeah.”
Chelsie: “And you know the other web site, some
web sites just want you to ‘like’ them on Facebook.”
Olivia: ”So we’ve gone through all the web sites,
and we’ve gone through all the relevant…. EarthSky
definitely answered our question and gave us extra
information.”
Logan :“Yes- Sky and Telescope and EarthSky are
similar- did you notice that? They are similar and
they are the most relevant.”

14. PEN-CIL Study LRA 2016 presentation
CONCLUSIONS
Potentially useful for teachers? Maybe….
Skill area Desirable Discourse markers Dialogic Inter-thinking?
for Critical Internet Literacy?
Some evidence of obuchenie and peer-peer
scaffolding – but it’s incredibly difficult to capture
‘knowledge creation’
Personal Internet Inquiry
(Coiro, Castek, Quinn, 2016)
Plus
Obuchenie
+
Inter-thinking

15. Colin Harrison
Learning Sciences Research Institute /
School of Education
University of Nottingham
Understanding
Internet Search and Evaluation Strategies
During Fifth Graders’ Group Work