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

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

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

3. 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?

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

5. 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

6. 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

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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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”)

12. 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

13. 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).

14. 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.”

15. 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

16. 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.

17. 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.

18. 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.

19. 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

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