Computers in Human Behavior 28 (2012) 515–526

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Computers in Human Behavior

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/comphumbeh

Improving Information Problem Solving skills in Secondary Education through

embedded instruction
Esther Argelagós, Manoli Pifarré ⇑
Faculty of Education, Educational Psychology, Universitat de Lleida, Avda. Estudi General, 4, 25001 Lleida, Spain

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This empirical study consists in an investigation of the effects, on the development of Information Prob-
Available online 5 December 2011 lem Solving (IPS) skills, of a long-term embedded, structured and supported instruction in Secondary
Education. Forty secondary students of 7th and 8th grades (13–15 years old) participated in the 2-year
Keywords: IPS instruction designed in this study. Twenty of them participated in the IPS instruction, and the remain-
Information Problem Solving ing twenty were the control group. All the students were pre- and post-tested in their regular classrooms,
Inquiry instruction and their IPS process and performance were logged by means of screen capture software, to warrant their
Embedded instruction
ecological validity. The IPS constituent skills, the web search sub-skills and the answers given by each
Scaffolds
Script and support
participant were analyzed. The main findings of our study suggested that experimental students showed
Secondary Education 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 develop-
ment and efficiency of the students’ IPS skills by using net information better and participating fully in
the global knowledge society.
Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction difficulties in developing it. Next, we will revise previous studies

Nowadays, the World Wide Web (WWW) has become one of
the most important information sources in both personal and aca-
demic life. Students in Secondary Education use the Internet
widely for both leisure and school assignments; however, it is a
widely accepted fact that the complex cognitive activities involved
in the processes of gathering and processing information from the
web are not instinctively acquired (Puustinen, Volckaert-Legrier,
Coquin, & Bernicot, 2009; Wood, 2009). Secondary students have
serious difficulties in such skills as identifying the information
needed, searching, locating and processing information from the
web (Wallace, Kupperman, Krajcik, & Soloway, 2000). To overcome
this problem, educational institutions have the duty to instruct
their students explicitly and extensively, since those skills are ame-
nable to improvement through instruction (Wiley et al., 2009). The
main goal of this study is to analyze the effect of a long-term
embedded, structured and supported instruction on the develop-
ment of students’ information problem skills. To accomplish this
goal, in the next sections, we will first describe the concept of
Information Problem Solving process and highlight the students’
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +34 973 70 65 61; fax: +34 973 70 65 02.
E-mail addresses: eargelagos@pip.udl.cat (E. Argelagós), pifarre@pip.udl.cat
(M. Pifarré).
on effective design of instructional support in IPS processes and
their limitations by means of an analysis of how our study plan
may tackle and overcome these limitations by helping students
to develop efficient IPS skills. Finally, we will formulate the re-
search questions that guide our study.
1.1. Information Problem Solving
Gathering and processing information from the web involves
complex cognitive activities and requires from individuals to iden-
tify information needs, locate information sources, extract and
organize information from each source, and synthesize informa-
tion from a variety of sources. This set of interrelated abilities is re-
ferred to as information seeking (Marchionini, 1995; Wallace et al.,
2000; Wilson, 1999), Information Literacy (American Library
Association, 1998; Shapiro & Hughes, 1996; UNESCO, 2006) or
Information Problem Solving (Eisenberg & Berkowitz, 1990; Land
& Green, 2000; Moore, 1995; Wolf, Brush, & Saye, 2003).
Different models have described the Information Problem-Solv-
ing (IPS) process as it can be segmented into several sub-processes
(Brand-Gruwel, Wopereis, & Vermetten, 2005; Gerjets &
Hellenthal-Schorr, 2008). As summarized by Gerjets, Kammerer,
and Werner (2011), a collection from several existing models
yields five important processes: (1) an information problem is

0747-5632/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.chb.2011.10.024
526 E. Argelagós, M. Pifarré / Computers in Human Behavior 28 (2012) 515–526
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