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This is to certify that the
dissertation entitled

STUDENTS WITH LEARNING DISABILITIES AND THE WORLD
WIDE WEB: TEACHING INFORMATION PROBLEM SOLVING TO
IMPROVE EXPOSITORY REPORT WRITING

presented by

Svjetlana Curcic

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for the

PhD degree in Special Education

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STUDENTS WITH LEARNING DISABILITIES AND THE WORLD WIDE WEB:
TEACHING INFORMATION PROBLEM SOLVING TO IMPROVE EXPOSITORY
REPORT WRITING
By

Svjetlana Curcic

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University

in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Special Education

2009

ABSTRACT
STUDENTS WITH LEARNING DISABILITIES AND THE WORLD WIDE WEB:
TEACHING INFORMATION PROBLEM SOLVING TO IMPROVE EXPOSITORY
REPORT WRITING
By

Svj etlana Curcic

This study examined the effectiveness of instruction in learning with the Word
Wide Web (the Web) in which 20 seventh and eighth grade students with a learning
disability in reading (LD) were taught information problem solving skills. An
experimental pretest-posttest repeated measure design was used to investigate the effects
of intervention in which the treatment group was instructed in the Bi g6 Skills model to
information problem solving. Both groups used an Essay map as a visual organizer.

Both groups significantly improved in the quality of writing and navigation. The
results show that the treatment group significantly outperformed the control group on the
measure of text length. The treatment group posttest scores showed a significant
improvement in writing organization. Correlational analyses showed no significant
differences between the control and treatment group in prior knowledge, motivation, or

gender.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am indebted to a number of MSU faculty and, first of all, would like to
acknowledge my dissertation chairperson, Dr. Gary Troia. This dissertation would not
have been possible without his guidance. Dr. Gary Troia has been an outstanding mentor
and I extend here my heartfelt thank you for his invaluable guidance and mentoring.

I also would like to acknowledge my dissertation committee: Dr. Cindy Okolo,
for her guidance in and beyond this project, and Dr. Carol Sue Englert and Dr. Douglas
Hartman for their helpful comments and suggestions. I would like to recognize additional
faculty who helped me advance my research and teaching: Dr. Susan Peters, Dr. Mary
Juzwik, the late Dr. Michael Pressley, and Dr. Chris Wheeler. A special thanks goes to
Dr. Rand Spiro for inspiring my intellectual pursuits.

My special thanks also go to faculty beyond MSU, Dr. Julie Coiro at the
University of Rhode Island and Dr. Donald J. Leu, Jr. at the University of Connecticut,
who generously shared their research and the work they did with their colleagues related
to new literacies. In addition, Dr. Michael Eisenberg at the University of Washington and
Mr. Robert Berkowitz, Wayne Central Schools, Ontario, New York, generously provided
permission to use their work (the Big6 Skills) in this dissertation.

I extend my appreciation to the students, teachers, director of education, and
administrative staff in the school involved in this research. Without their cooperation this
research would not have been possible.

I would like to thank my parents for always encouraging my educational pursuits.

Finally, I thank my husband for his unwavering support throughout this project.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................. vii
LIST OF FIGURES ......................................................................................................... viii
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................... 1
Background ........................................................................................................... 1
Statement of the Problem ................................................................................... 10
Research Questions ............................................................................................. 12
CHAPTER II ..................................................................................................................... 14
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ................................................................................... 14
Theoretical Framework ....................................................................................... 15
The World Wide Web in the Context of K-12 Schooling .................................. 18
Selected Theoretical and Empirical Studies: Approaches to reading Online and
Offline ................................................................................................................. 21
Reading as text comprehension offline .............................................. . 21
Reading as text comprehension applied to online reading .................... 25
The role of working memory (WM) in reading .................................... 30
Working memory (WM) processing applied to online reading ............ 31
Dual-coding theory ................................................................................ 35
Dual-coding theory applied to online reading and learning .................. 35
Semiotic literacy model ......................................................................... 37
Semiotic literacy model applied ............................................................ 38
New literacies and reading .................................................................... 39
New literacies applied to online reading ............................................... 4O
Cognitive flexibility theory ................................................................... 42
Cognitive flexibility theory applied ...................................................... 43
Summary ............................................................................................... 44
K-12 Students and the World Wide Web ........................................................... 45
Summary ................................................................................................ 53
K-12 Students with LD and the World Wide Web ............................................. 55
Summary ................................................................................................ 62
Information Problem Solving and the Big6 Skills .............................................. 63
The Big6 Skills Model ........................................................................... 63
Writing from multiple sources ............................................................... 65
Metacognition and strategy instruction ................................................. 68
Scaffolding ............................................................................................ 7O
Motivation ............................................................................................. 71

iv

CHAPTER III .................................................................................................................... 73

METHOD .......................................................................................................................... 73
Participants .......................................................................................................... 73

Setting .................................................................................................................. 76

Data Collection and Analyses .............................................................................. 76

Data collection ...................................................................................... 76

Data analyses ......................................................................................... 77

Pilot study .............................................................................................. 80

General Procedures ............................................................................................... 81
Assignment to conditions ...................................................................... 81

Context for information search .............................................................. 82

Task instruction ..................................................................................... 83

Web portal ............................................................................................. 84

Pre-intervention ..................................................................................... 86

Intervention ............................................................................................ 88
Post-Intervention ................................................................................... 93

Scoring reliability ................................................................................................. 94
Procedural reliability ............................................................................................ 94
Instruments ........................................................................................................... 96
Artifacts ............................................................................................................... 96

Final activity ......................................................................................................... 97
CHAPTER IV .................................................................................................................... 98
RESULTS ......................................................................................................................... 98
Research Question A ............................................................................................ 99
Research Question B .......................................................................................... 100
Research Question C .......................................................................................... 102
Analyses Related to Prior Knowledge, Motivation, and Gender ........................ 104
Correlational analysis of prior knowledge .......................................................... 104
Motivation ......................................................................................................... 106
Gender analysis ................................................................................................... 110
Research Question D .......................................................................................... 112
Product/Process .................................................................................. l 12

Skills ................................................................................................... 113

Research Question E ........................................................................................... 113
CHAPTER V ................................................................................................................... 116
DISCUSSION .................................................................................................................. 1 16
Summary and Discussion of the Findings .......................................................... 116
Theoretical Implications ..................................................................................... 125
Instructional Implications ................................................................................... 128

Limitations of the Study ..................................................................................... 130

Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 132
APPENDIX A: Pre-intervention Session ........................................................................ 134
APPENDIX B: TICA Checklist ............................................................................... 136
APPENDIX C: Handout 1—Big6 Skills The "Big6m" ................................................... 137
APPENDIX D: Script ...................................................................................................... 138
APPENDIX E: The Essay Map Graphic Organizer ........................................................ 139
APPENDIX F: Intervention ............................................................................................ 140
APPENDIX G: Intervention: Modeling Steps 5 and 6 of the Big6 Skills ....................... 141
APPENDIX H: Motivation Scale .................................................................................... 143
APPENDIX 1: Topics and Web Sites .............................................................................. 144
APPENDIX J: Semi-structured Questionnaire ................................................................ 147
APPENDIX K: True/False Questions ............................................................................. 149
REFERENCES ................................................................................................................ 152

vi

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Demographics and Matching Variable Performance of Student Participants... 75

Table 2. Percentage of students in each group that completed assigned research topic

in one session .................................................................................................................... 96
Table 3. Mean Performance of Students on VIQ/VIC, PRQ/PRI, PC, and T ICA ............. 98
Table 4. Analysis of Variance for Writing Quality ............................................................ 99
Table 5. Analysis of Variance for Text Length ................................................................ 100
Table 6. Analysis of Variance for Navigation ................................................................. 101
Table 7. Correlations for Text Length, Writing Quality, and Navigation with
Prior Knowledge .............................................................................................................. 102
Table 8. Mean Numbers of Correct Responses Related to Prior Knowledge ................. 103
Table 9. Means of Students’ Responses to Motivation Questionnaire ............................ 104
Table 10. Correlations for Motivation and Prior Knowledge ......................................... 107

Table 11. Means for Gender at Pretest and Posttest for Writing Quality, Text Length, and
Navigation ....................................................................................................................... 108

vii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Screenshot with text and icons (Copyright © 2006, California Energy

Commission) ........................................................................................................................ 6
Figure 2: RAFT Rubric (Copyright. © 2000-2008, ALTEC at University of Kansas ..... 79
Figure 3: Basic task instruction ......................................................................................... 83
Figure 4. Screenshot of the Web Portal ............................................................................ 84
Figure 5. Screenshot of Electricity and safety Web hyperlinks (EPCOR. Copyright

2000 Culverco.com, LLC.) ............................................................................................... 85
Figure 6. Steps in the Big6 Skills ...................................................................................... 87
Figure 7. Display of Pretest and Posttest Means of Text Length .................................... 101

viii

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Background

Learning with the World Wide Web (the Web) on the Internet has been integrated
into most states’ educational standards and schools (Swanson, 2006). The National
Center for Education Statistics (N CES) reports that in 2005 nearly 100% of schools had
access to the Internet as opposed to 35% in 1994 (Wells & Lewis, 2006). The recognition
of the widespread use of the Internet, which begins in early childhood, prompted NCES
to include in their reports children as young as three years of age (DeBell, 2005). About
two-thirds of children in nursery schools (67%) and 80% of kindergartners used
computers in 2003, and about one quarter (23%) of children in nursery schools and about
one-third (32%) of kindergarteners used the Internet. DeBell and Chapman (2006) report
that, overall, most K-12 students use computers and the majority use the Internet: 91%
(53 million) of children age three through grade 12 use computers, and about 59% (35
million) of them use the Internet.

Students’ computer and Internet use are of interest for several reasons. DeBell and
Chapman (2006) and Wagner and Kozrna (2003) report that the use of computers and the
Internet is interdependent with literacy and associated with improvements in education,
labor market prospects, and everyday lives. The Partnership for 21 st Century Skills
(2006) also states that information literacy and technology skills are considered to be
very important, in addition to basic knowledge and skills such as reading, writing, and
mathematics, for those entering the workforce. In 2003, 84% of adults with a bachelor’s

degree were Internet users, as opposed to 47% of those with a high school diploma, or

20% of those without a high school diploma (DeBell & Chapman, 2006). The recognition
of the importance of information literacy prompted policymakers to propose changes in
Part D Sec. 271 . Title II of No Child Left Behind through passing the Achievement
Through Technology and Innovation (ATTAIN) Act. One of the stated purposes of the
ATTAIN Act is to ensure that every student has access to individualized, rigorous, and
relevant learning through technology which is going to be measured at least once by the
eighth grade (Washington D. C., 110th Congress Session, 2007). The International ICT
Literacy Panel (2002) defines information-communication-technological (ICT) literacy as
“using digital technology, communications tools, and/or networks to access, manage,
integrate, evaluate, and create information in order to function in a knowledge society”
(p. 10).

According to the U. S. Department of Commerce, the majority of students use the
World Wide Web for school assignments: 13.5% of children 3 to 5 years of age, 46% of
children 6 to 9 years of age, 84% of 10- to 14-year-olds and 91% of 15- to 17—year-olds,
work on Web-related school assignments (Day, Janus, & Davis, 2005). A number of
studies report on students’ interaction with the Web in classrooms. For example, students
are involved in Web-related science inquiry projects (e.g., Hoffman & Krajcik, 1999;
Jones, 2002; Lyons, Hoffman, Krajcik, & Soloway, 1997; McCrory Wallace,
Kupperman, Krajcik, & Soloway, 2000) and social studies projects (Jackson, 1996; Wolf,
Brush, & Saye, 2003). Students also search the Web for historical information (e.g.,
Pritchard & Cartwright, 2004) and literacy projects (e.g., Eagleton, Guinee, & Langlais,

2003; Parks, Huot, Harriers, & Lemonnier, 2005).

In addition, students use the Web outside of school. A study by the Kaiser Family
Foundation (2005), based on a nationally representative survey of over 2, 000 young
people (grades 3 through 12), reports that the amount of time spent on visiting various
Web sites and playing games has increased significantly from 1999 to 2004. Within that
period, the time that 8- to 18-year-olds spent visiting Web sites has doubled from 7 to 14
minutes per day, and the time playing computer games has increased from 12 to 19
minutes per day. New daily activities that barely existed in 1999, such as instant
messaging (17 minutes) and using some form of computer graphics (e.g., PowerPoint,
photo editing, design), contributed to a significant increase in overall daily computer time
of young people from 27 minutes in 1999 to 62 minutes in 2004.

A report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project reveals that teenagers use
the Web to forge new and old relationships with friends and to manage (e. g.,
www.myspace.com) their online identities (Lenhart & Madden, 2007). Various identities
and social worlds also are constructed through Web sites that serve as outlets for young
people (e.g., zines) to express their values and beliefs (e.g., Guzzetti & Gamboa, 2004;
Knobel & Lankshear, 2002). Burnett and Wilkinson (2005) report that elementary
students’ searches on the Web include exploring information for personal interests,
games, popular culture, and online shopping, in addition to school projects. Similarly, in
Curcic’s (2005) study, elementary students engaged in auction trading (independently,
using neopoints, a currency earned at www.neopets.com “shops and auctions” page),
chatting with friends and family, and searching for specific information of interest (e.g., a

specific car type, MP3 player, etc.)

In spite of students’ engagement in such diverse school-related and out-of-school
practices, the literature review by Kuiper, Volman, and Terwel (2005) suggests that
students involved in learning with the Web need training and support in search skills and
management of information. Kuiper and colleagues also report that there is an
insufficient knowledge base about the Web and students with disabilities. The present
study aims to contribute to the understandings of learning in electronic environments
such as the Web, as well as to practical discussions on how to support such learning. The
focus is on seventh and eighth grade students with a learning disability (LD) in reading,
who may have difficulties making sense of text and hypertext.

The US. Department of Education (2002) defines a specific learning disability
(LD) as a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in
understanding or in using language, spoken or written, that may manifest itself in an
imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical
calculations. The estimates of the number of students with reading difficulties among
students with LD are as high as 80% to 90% (Gersten, Fuchs, Williams, & Baker, 2001;
Vaughn, Bos, & Schumm, 2007). While there is very little empirical research on
struggling readers’ interaction with the Web, some researchers suggest that these
students’ difficulties with traditional print will carryover to electronic texts (e.g., Coiro,
2005; Leu, 2000). This suggestion seems plausible for several reasons. First, learning
with the Web is not unlike learning with traditional texts (e.g., Coiro & Dobler, 2007;
Duke, Schmar-Dobler, & Zhang, 2006). Reading is still one of the prerequisites for
learning in both of these contexts and reading remains a challenge for students who may

experience phonological, orthographic, and text comprehension difficulties.

Second, some studies reveal that students transfer their comprehension strategies
from traditional texts to the Web. For example, Schmar-Dobler (2003) documented how
fifth graders activated their prior knowledge, monitored and repaired comprehension,
determined important ideas, and asked questions while reading on the Web. These are
reading strategies also identified as those used by accomplished and expert readers (e. g.,
Duke & Pearson, 2002; Pressley & Afilerbach, 1995). At the same time, students with
LD and poor readers are sometimes described as being deficient in applying strategies
while reading (Flavell, 1970; Englert & Thomas, 1987; Gaultney, 1998; Winograd,
1984). So, they are likely to have few effective strategies to deploy during Web-based
reading.

Third, Web reading involves decision-making that pertains not only to texts but
also to the selection of links and icons within texts (e.g., Coiro, 2003; Bolter, 1998).
Hypertext, as a source of information on Web pages, involves texts and ideas that are
“interlinked to one another in multiple ways” (Burbules & Callister, 2000, p. 43). The
structural format of the Web, with icons and hyperlinks, adds skills to be mastered such
as navigational skills (e.g., Wenger & Payne, 1996). With no fixed text structure on the
Web, the search for information appears to be more demanding than information search
within traditional texts (e.g., Kozma, 1991). For example, on the Web page related to the
topic “What is Electricity?” (http://www.enerquuest.ca.gov/story/chapter02.htrnl), there
are icons next to the text representing a computer, microscope, shelved books, hand-held
device, magnifying glass, and globe. Pointing to these icons reveals links and what they
stand for: a computer stands for and is a link to “Energy story”, the microscope links to

“Science projects”, books on the shelf links to “Library”, the hand-held device links to

 

“Games”, the magnifying glass links to “Search for EQ”, and the globe links to “Links”.
Figure 1 shows the screenshot of this Web page (links are accessed by pointing at one of
the icons on the left).

Figure 1. Screenshot with text and icons.

Chapter 2: What Is Electricity?

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Source: Copyright © 2006, California Energy Commission.

In interacting with the Web, students may (a) read/view/search for information;
(b) make decisions about which pathways to follow; (c) judge usefulness of pathways; (d)
evaluate which information is relevant for the task at hand; and (e) use strategies to
extract and preserve information deemed relevant.

This study aims to examine how we can support the interaction of students with
reading difficulties with the electronic environment of the Web as they engage in the
processes mentioned above. The specific focus in the present study is on the task of text
search on Web pages relevant to seventh and eighth grade topics selected from science
and social studies curricula. Guthrie and Mosenthal (1987) note that text search, or

locating information in text, is prevalent in both school and work contexts.

Dreher and Guthrie (1990) suggest that a text search involves finding information
related to a specific goal. On the other hand, the goal of reading information for the
purposes of text recall involves remembering contents of a text, a goal usually associated
with traditional reading comprehension (e.g., Guthrie & Mosenthal, 1987; Mikulecky,
1982). Although Guthrie and Mosenthal (1987) advocate conceptual distinction between
these two goals of reading (for information search and for information recall), the two
goals in practice often overlap. For example, to evaluate the importance of information
for a task at hand, we read information in context, and therefore summarizing (parts of)
texts may be involved in both tasks.

Because students seem to be involved with the Web outside school, they are likely
to develop some knowledge about hypertext features such as links and icons, or more
broadly, some of the “grammar of visual design” (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006) without
explicit instruction. However, as the literature review in the next chapter reveals, students
could benefit from instruction in the processes related to the search for information.
These findings should not come as a surprise given the fact that students often show
difficulties with “reading-to-locate information tasks” in traditional textbooks as well
(Dreher, 1995, p. 1).

The ability to identify important elements in a text may be linked to readers’
strategies (e.g., Englert & Thomas, 1987; Winograd, 1984), grade/age level and expertise
in reading (e.g., Brown & Day, 1983; Englert & Hiebert, 1984), prior knowledge (e.g.,
McNamara, Floyd, Best, & Louwerse, 2004; Symons & Pressley, 1993), and
motivational variables (e.g., Reynolds & Symons, 2001; Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997).

Expository texts may be particularly challenging for elementary students with a learning

disability in reading (LD), who are, along with other students, more Often exposed to
narrative texts in the early grades (Duke, 2000). Research also shows (e.g., Englert &
Thomas, 1987; Winograd, 1984; Williams, 2003) that students with LD in reading are
less active in using metacognitive skills and strategies while reading and tend to import
more irrelevant information into their summarization of texts.

On a positive note, studies with K-12 students and their search for information
Show that students, including poor readers, benefit from instruction in search strategies
with traditional texts (e.g., Dreher, 1995; Dreher, Davis, Waynant, & Clewell, 1997;
Dreher & Sammons, 1994; Symons, MacLatchy-Gaudet, Stone, & Reynolds, 2001). In
addition, a number of interventions have been designed to promote students' development
of self-regulation, metacognition, and strategic approaches to reading (e. g., Denton,
Vaughn, & Fletcher, 2003; Englert & Mariage, 1991; Gersten, Fuchs, William, & Baker,
2001; Meltzer, Katzir, Miller, Reddy, & Roditi, 2004; Paris & Oka, 1989; Pressley,
Johnson, Symons, McGoldrick, & Kurita, 1989; Williams, Hall, Lauer, Stafford, DeSisto,
& deCani, 2005). However, interventions focused on strategies that address information
literacy needs of students within electronic environments are scarce.

To address informational needs of students, Eisenberg and Berkowitz (1987)
developed a Big6 Skills curriculum focused on six steps in an information problem-
solving process: (1) Task definition; (2) Information seeking strategies; (3) Location and
access; (4) Use of information; (5) Synthesis; and (6) Evaluation (for more information,
visit: http://www.big6.com). Although this curriculum has not been deveIOped primarily
for students with disabilities and their interaction with the Web, it has been reported that

this model is frequently used in the US. for information problem solving tasks (e.g.,

Kuiper et al., 2005; Carey, 2003). The purpose of this study is to examine whether the
Big6 Skills may serve as a tool to simplify text search and support students with and
without LD in the process of information location and management. A number of reports
(e.g., Jansen & Culpepper 1996; Spitzer, 2000; Wolf, Brush, & Saye, 2003) advocate the
use of the Big6 Skills approach in K-12 education. However, empirical studies with the
focus on the Big6 in K-12 setting are limited.

Wolf, Brush, and Saye (2003) conducted a study with 18 eighth grade students
and concluded that the Big6 Skills “may act as a metacognitive scaffold that supports
students while they become more adept at monitoring their own thought processes during
the problem solving” (p.18). Written artifacts, journals, and exit interviews revealed that
students indeed developed metacognitive skills while implementing the Big6 Skills. As
Wolf and colleagues (2003) suggest, it would not be surprising to find that students
benefit from strategy instruction. The present study aims to determine whether instruction
in the Big6 Skills benefits students with LD in reading in their information problem
solving and their text search on the Web.

Windschitl (1998) notes that educators have developed many classroom activities
and projects based on the use of the Web, but that the literature does not address critical
questions such as “Are these practices helping students, and, if so, how?” (p. 28). These
two questions—if and how—are central to the present study. As research is scarce about
the informational processing skills of students with LD, an investigation into the role of
the Big6 Skills in learning with the Web, focused on information location and

management, could provide a valuable knowledge base.

Statement of the Problem

As participation in literacy practices is increasingly mediated by technology,
some authors note that the term literacies, rather than literacy, better captures the
increasing multiplicity of literacy practices (Coiro, Knobel, Lankashear, & Leu, 2008;
Leu, 2002; The New London Group, 1996). Educational tasks assume new complexities
within electronic environments and some authors draw attention to both current
definitions of literacy and literacy instruction as inadequate (Leu, et al., 2004). Leu and
colleagues view new information-communication technologies, particularly the Internet,
as essential in preparing students for new literacies because new technologies are seen as
central to the acquisition of knowledge.

The International ICT Panel (2002) proposed five critical components of ICT
literacy, “a set of skills and knowledge presented in a sequence that suggests increasing
cognitive complexity.” (p. 11). They defined these components as:

Access: knowing about and how to retrieve information.

Manage: applying an existing organizational scheme.

Integrate: interpreting and representing information, summarizing, comparing and

contrasting information.

Evaluate: judging the quality, relevance, usefulness, or efficiency of information.

Create: adapting, applying, designing, inventing, or authoring information (p. 11).

While literacy skills that include not only access to information but also its
management and use are considered critical for success in education and life (e.g., ICT
Panel, 2002; DeBell & Chapman, 2006), we know little about students with LD and their

performances on such tasks. Research about students’ Web searches on the Internet

10

shows that most students could use instruction and support in their information problem
solving. Although reading and writing are still viewed as central to new literacies (e. g.,
Leu et al., 2004), Leu (2002) suggests that new strategies for the location, evaluation, and
use of information are required. The New London Group (1996) iterates that literacy
practices cannot be simply reinvented by students but need to be learned. Therefore, one
of the implications of integrating the Web into classrooms is a need to understand how
learning in electronic environments may be facilitated.

Research shows that strategic readers in electronic environments engage in online
reading employ strategies used by competent readers with traditional texts (offline
reading) (Coiro & Dobler, 2007; Duke et al., 2006; Schmar-Dobler, 2003). Studies also
show that online reading might require additional skills and strategies (e. g., Coiro, 2007;
Leu et al., 2004; Wallace, Kupperman, Krajcik, & Soloway, 2000). Although instruction
in information problem solving seems to be important for all students, some authors note
that it may be particularly important for students with lower reading skills (e.g., Dreher et
al., 1997). Coiro (2005) expresses a concern about struggling readers, noting that
teachers should “pay a greater attention to readers struggling with making sense of online
texts—or risk fostering inequities in electronic literacy” (p. 35). The ICT Panel (2002)
extends the notion of inequity and divide beyond access to hardware, software, and
networks to one that is created by limited literacy levels and a lack of the skills needed to
make effective use of technologies.

Research with traditional printed texts shows that it is possible to teach
elementary students, including those considered poor readers, to develop strategies for

finding and using information (e.g., Dreher et al., 1997). However, virtually nothing is

11

known about students with LD and their online reading and interaction with the Web.
Students with LD are increasingly educated in regular education classrooms (N CES,
2006). These students are often held to the same standards as their peers; yet, they have to
overcome serious obstacles in their learning. The primary focus of this study is to
investigate whether we can help the students with LD to overcome some of the obstacles
in their learning with the Web through instruction in using the Big6 Skills in finding,
using, and managing information for the purposes of writing informational texts.
Research Questions

This study aims to examine the outcomes of intervention with the Big6 Skills
information problem solving approach to support students in their Web searches and
report writing. An experimental pretest-posttest control group design used in this study
involves two groups of seventh and eighth graders with LD who were matched on several
variables (i.e. verbal and perceptual abilities, Internet skills, reading comprehension) and
randomly assigned to the treatment and control group. The treatment group was
instructed in the Big6 Skills approach to information problem solving, and both groups
were instructed to use an Essay map as a visual organizer. In addition, a rating scale to
assess students’ motivation and prior knowledge was administered before each research
topic. Research topics were related to social studies and science. The task called for the
students to write reports for Social Studies and Science Fair posters to inform the fourth
graders in their school about those topics. Finally, the treatment students were
interviewed to gather qualitative data about their interaction with the Web and the Big6

Skills. The research questions include:

12

(a) Do students receiving the intervention with the Big6 Skills improve the quality
of their written informational texts in comparison to the students not receiving
the intervention?

(b) Do students receiving the intervention with the Big6 Skills increase the length
Of their written informational texts in comparison to those students not receiving
the intervention?

(c) Do students receiving the intervention with the Big6 Skills increase the amount
Of information search they perform in comparison to those students not
receiving the intervention?

((1) Do students receiving the intervention with the Big6 Skills exhibit greater
metacognitive awareness about information problem solving at the conclusion
of the study as opposed to the beginning of the study?

(e) Do students receiving the intervention with the Big6 Skills perceive any benefits
in using the Big6 Skills approach to information search and management?

It was anticipated that: (a) students in the treatment condition would write
qualitatively better expository texts; (b) students in the treatment condition would write
longer expository texts; (c) students in the treatment group would navigate to more web
pages to search for information; ((1) students in the treatment group would increase in
their metacognitive awareness related to their information problem solving; and (e)
students would perceive instruction in information problem solving with the Big6 Skills

as beneficial.

l3

CHAPTER 2
REVIEW OF LITERATURE

Introduction

In School’s out, Perelman (1992) envisions a society where “teaching” and
“learning” would be transformed to the point that education as such would not exist; there
would be no schools and we would be involved in “hyperlearning” (p. 27). The
environment for learning would be hypermedia with a number of links built into various
texts. On the other hand, Negroponte (1995) portrays education as a static process, in
which a teacher transported from the past across 150 years could continue on teaching
right at the point where his colleague stopped. The present day situation in education
seems to be neither as radical as the first vision portrays nor as inert as the second.
Education has not radically changed as Perelman predicted; however, some changes are
taking place. For example, reading and writing are still associated with print texts but are
also increasingly associated with electronic texts, software, and networks. The question is
not whether the machines will replace teachers, but how to support both teaching and
learning with machines. School is not “out” and the changing nature of literacy practices
demand that we develop curriculum and instruction related to electronic environments.

In this study, offline reading refers to reading printed texts, while online reading
refers to reading electronic texts on the Web. The Web (the World Wide Web) is a
system of interlinked electronic documents, known as hypertext. The Web is a service
that can be accessed via computers connected to the Internet, a global network of
interconnected computers. The focus in this study is on online reading on the Web and

writing based on multiple electronic sources of information.

14

This literature review highlights some aspects of the changing nature of literacy
practices with a focus on students in K-12 classrooms. The literature review is organized
in six sections. The first section discusses epistemology fi'om the perspective of
electronic environments and new frameworks for learning, followed by the Web
environment in the context of K-12 schooling in the second section. The third section
presents selected theoretical approaches to reading and learning offline and research that
examines these theoretical assumptions in empirical studies of online reading and
learning. The fourth and the fifth sections present studies that specifically focus on K-12
students and the Web and students with LD and the Web, respectively. The review
concludes with information problem solving and the Big6 Skills model in the sixth
section.

Theoretical Framework

Electronic environments are characterized by hypertexts Hyperlinks allow
electronic texts to have “alterable surfaces” (Reinking, 1998, p. 20). In addition to these
material features of hypertexts, some authors (e.g., Lankshear, Peters, & Knobel, 2000;
Leu et al., 2004; Marshall, 2000) suggest that electronic texts are functionally distinct
from print-based texts; reading electronic texts involves making sense of still and moving
images, sounds, and words. This "information bricolage" creates possibilities for making
meaning in different ways than print texts (Burnett in Burnett & Wilkinson, 2005, p.
158). For example, Lankshear et al. (2000) argue that information technology in general,

and the Internet specifically, might “call for rethinking epistemology in a digital age” and

15

 

suggest “perforrnative epistemology” using Wittgenstein’s notion of knowing as
“making, doing and acting” (p. 21).

Lankshear and colleagues suggest that “knowing” within spaces of ICT is
different from “propositional knowledge of what already exists” (p. 36). Their account is
based on the relation of knowing to “the mastery of a technique” (Wittgenstein, 2001 ,
p.178) — knowing is viewed as an ability to perform; for example, how to make or make
use of the links on the Web, how to use, learn, or program computer languages, or how to
select, evaluate, or use information sources (p. 36). In Philosophical Investigations
Wittgenstein (2001) illustrates instances of understanding and knowing in our everyday
practices through exclarnations: “Now I know how to go on!” and “Now I have it!” (pp.
89-90). Learning from this perspective is not only about content mastery but also about
mastering and possessing a set of skills necessary to perform certain activities.

A common thread in the accounts discussed above is the notion that isolated
pieces of information do not lead to the acquisition of knowledge and understanding.
Spiro and Jehng (1990) use a metaphor of crisscrossing conceptual landscapes (after
Wittgenstein), suggesting that knowledge that will be “used in many ways is taught in
many ways” (p. 171). Similarly, Salomon and Perkins (1996) speak about a “network of
connections ” necessary for understanding to take place, advocate for “networking
pedagogy”, and also point out the importance of having a general knowledge of how to
learn (pp. 117-125). In addition, Kozrna (2000) suggests that we need to shift the focus of
our research to instruction in tools that would enable students to take charge of their own

learning.

16

In addition to the framework of performance knowledge, Lemke (1998) suggests
that information technologies make possible “new paradigms for education and learning”
and allow a shift toward learning that is interactive (p. 287). Within the paradigm of
interactive learning, a teacher’s task becomes helping children “learn how to learn” new
technologies of literacy (Leu, 2002, p. 313). Salomon and Perkins (1996) also discuss
learning for understanding as a “matter of performance acquisition”, similar to motor
skills but, in addition, extending to mastering patterns of thinking (pp. 116-117).

From the perspective of cognitive flexibility theory, Spiro and Jehng (1990) argue
that electronic environments with hypertext may enhance comprehension by offering
multiple perspectives from which to learn and situating information in different contexts.
While hypertext designed with an educational intent may lead to enhanced learning
(Spiro & Jehng, 1990), hypertext on the Web is not designed specifically with this
purpose in mind. Nonetheless, the recommendation by Spiro (2002) to teach students to
be prepared to deal with the changing world of life and work seems to be very important
in view of the increasingly complex informational world in which we live.

Search for information—its location, selection, and organization—has always
been an integral part of literacy education (e. g., Dreher, et al., 1997; Dreher & Sammons,
1994). While both online and offline reading may involve information search and its
location, search engines demand more complex skills and knowledge for such tasks than
looking in a table of contents or an index (Leu, Zawilinski, Castek, Banerjee, Housand,
Liu, & O’Neil, 2006). Mikulecky and Kirkley (1998) describe increased literacy demands
in many workplaces and argue that it is far more important to develop skills of actively

and interactively accessing, analyzing, and applying information to solve problems than

17

being able to simply read and comprehend narrative texts or expository texts in
textbooks. Changing workplace literacy demands and changing literacy practices call for
new examinations of instruction in how to access, locate, manage, and communicate
information.

The World Wide Web in the Context of K-12 Schooling

Similar to reading traditional texts in school-related assignments (e. g., textbooks),
an interaction with the Web may involve reading for the purposes of recall Of the text
content, learning from the text, and a text search for a specific goal (e.g., write a report,
give a presentation). In K-12 classrooms, students are often asked to read a print-based
text and then answer specific questions or summarize information (Kintsch, 1994).
Kintsch (1994) suggests that learning from a text, on the other hand, requires a deeper

understanding that can be applied to new situations.

Text search, the focus of the present study, involves seeking information for
“reading-to-do” tasks as opposed to “reading-to-learn” (e.g., Dreher, 1993; Guthrie &
Mosenthal, 1987; Symons, MacLatchy-Gaudet, Stone, & Reynolds, 2001). Problem
solving tasks such as an information or text search can hardly be performed without
reading and may actually involve re-reading and “reinspection” of a text (Symons et al.,
2001, p. 3). Inquires on the Web demand that students coordinate a number of activities
that are more open in nature than reading informational text in a textbook followed by a
specific set of questions. A Web-related task may start with an information search within
hypertext, a text structure that may have a beginning point, but not necessarily a

particular middle or end point. Students are expected to design their own paths in

18

constructing meaning. Therefore, reading in different media may involve different

processes (e.g., Kozma, 1991).

While much progress has been accomplished in the area of offline reading (e.g.,
NICHD, 2000; RAND Reading Study Group, 2002), little is known about online reading
of students in K-12 educational settings. Online reading on the Web constitutes a
different environment for reading than printed texts in several aspects. First, the Web
may be viewed as “global hypertext” (Bolter, 1998, p. 7), which includes not only
interlinked texts but also images (including moving images), icons, and sounds. Because
of its text organization and multirnodality, hypertext creates new possibilities for meaning

making (Reinking, 1998; Luke, 2003; Kress, 2003).

Second, hypertext may be viewed as a collection of signs to be interpreted
through semiotic analysis as opposed to semantic analysis. Semiotics is seen as a
counterpart to semantics (Ricoeur, 1976). While semantics has as a unit of analysis a
sentence, semiotic analysis takes into consideration icon, index, and symbol, and the text
is seen as a collection of signs to be interpreted (Kress, 2003; Myers, Hammett, &
McKillop, 1998).

Third, hyperlinks (nodes) may function as icons and may also bear indexical
functions as they lead to other texts. The interpretation of hyperlinks may complicate
online reading because a reader may not know in advance whether the link will lead to
something that is closely or only remotely related to the text on the screen. The non-linear
nature of hypertext requires readers to decide what information to read and in what order,

which may be difficult for readers new to a domain (e.g., Kozma, 1991).

19

 

Finally, reading online includes competencies of reading print text (e.g., Duke,
Schmar-Dobler, & Zhang, 2006). However, emerging work on online reading suggests
that hypertext might present material that is more difficult to read than printed material
for both experienced and competent readers and less able readers (e.g., McEneaney,
2003). In addition, Leu, Kinzer, Coiro, and Cammack (2004) argue that what counts as
literacy activities changes with the Web environment and consequently the strategies for
comprehension and response also need to change. Yet, Ware and Warschauer (2005)
argue that what counts as literacy in many of today’s classrooms is still predominantly
focused on mastering discrete skills with decontextualized print texts. It Seems both
urgent and important to investigate literacy practices and instruction within electronic
environments (e.g., Coiro, Knobel, Lankshear, & Lea, 2008; McKenna, 1998; Mikulecky
& Kirkley, 1998). Recent work (e.g., Coiro, 2007; Leu et al., 2006) shows that
competencies required for successful interaction with offline environments might not be
sufficient for successful interaction with online environments and that those readers who
lack proficiency in both online and offline reading may be doubly disadvantaged.
Students with LD in reading have difficulties in offline reading and online environments
may compound their difficulties. The perspective that, for some students with LD,
electronic environments may create further obstacles in their learning is of particular
concern in this study.

Leu et al. (2006) note that reading on the Web typically involves reading
expository rather than narrative texts. Leu and colleagues’ case study of three seventh
graders revealed that one highly proficient student offline was also highly proficient

online, but also that one highly proficient offline student was low achieving in online

20

reading, and finally that one student with LD in reading was a much more efficient online
reader than his peer who had no LD and was highly proficient in offline reading. An
exploratory study that compared searches for information on the Web of three elementary
education students and three elementary students with LD in reading showed great
individual differences among the six students but also a need to support students with LD
in their search, evaluation, management, and use of information (Curcic, 2005). One of
the conclusions by Len and colleagues (e.g., Leu, Coiro, Castek, Hartman, Henry &
Reinking, in press) is that online reading is not isomorphic with offline reading.
However, the ways online and offline reading overlap or differ are under-researched. The
following section attempts to synthesize some of the theoretical and empirical work in
this area.
Selected Theoretical and Empirical Studies: Approaches to Reading and Learning
Offline and Online

In reading online as opposed to traditional print reading, one of the questions of
interest is whether research on reading print text applies to reading hypertext. It should be
noted that there is no single theory of reading, although there are several approaches to
understanding reading processes (e. g., Gough & Hillinger, 1980; Just & Carpenter, 1992;
Kintsch & van Dijk, 1978; LeBerge & Samuels, 1974). The discussion that follows is
limited to the theoretical approaches of reading and learning that have been empirically
examined in online environments.

Reading as text comprehension offline. Because reading online is not entirely
different from reading offline texts, one may deduce that much of the model of text

comprehension described by Kintsch and van Dijk (1978) applies to reading electronic

21

 

texts. Kintsch and van Dijk (1978) proposed a model of text comprehension that
hypothesized that readers form both a micro representation of a text (linguistic text base)
and macro representations of a text (situation model). The micro representation of a text
involves the understanding of words, phrases, and sentences while macro processes are
concerned with global understanding and overall ideas about the gist of the text (Kintsch
& van Dijk, 1978; Kintsch & Yarbrough, 1982). In their early work, Kintsch and van
Dijk (1978) assumed that “text comprehension is always controlled by a specific schema”
(p. 373). They also recognized that in some situations the specific schema may not suffice
and different schemata might be evoked. This model of text comprehension advances the
understanding of reading because it draws attention to various processes involved in
reading: we do not just decode words, but also form meaning about the gist of the text.
However, this model does not completely explain how we proceed to integrate new
information for which we may not have any developed schemata.

The concept of schema has been incorporated in some theories of reading
comprehension (e. g., Anderson & Pearson, 1994) as an entity in memory in the form of
previously stored knowledge, evoked as needed. Although Anderson and Pearson (1994)
make a distinction between reading with the deliberate intention of learning information
and reading a novel, for example, the problem of understanding how we come to
comprehend new information (from an informational text or from a novel) remains. In
considering the problems of bridging the gaps between prior knowledge and new
information, an important concept is that of inference. Inferential activity, conceptualized
by van der Broek (1994) as the constant fluctuation of activations which may be derived

from background knowledge, or only partially (italics added) derived from background

22

 

knowledge, adds a dynamic component to the reading process and removes (or removes
partially) the filling-Of-the-slots perception of reading comprehension (cf. Anderson &

Pearson, 1994, pp. 261-262).

Kintsch’s (1998; 2005) later works stress the interaction of basic linguistic
processing (construction) and knowledge integration, and he termed this model of reading
comprehension the construction-integrationist (CI) model. Kintsch perceives text
comprehension in the CI model as much more flexible than originally thought. He
recognizes that there is no pure text-base because readers bring their own knowledge and
experience to the situation model. The CI model, according to Kintsch (1998), involves
processes interacting at many different levels (e. g., perceptual, syntactic, semantic,
knowledge integration, and reasoning). The basic tenet of the CI model, however, is that
readers use the words of the text to construct propositions. These propositions activate
further propositions that are integrated into mental representations through the interplay
of both bottom-up and top-down processes. Although in he offers a view of schema as a
structure that is too tightly controlled and suggests that the CI model is much more
flexible, Kintsch (2005) still asserts schema as a “powerful determinant” and as a “major

constraint” that needs to be satisfied for a correct text interpretation (p. 127).

Some researchers argue that the schema concept has advanced classroom-based
instruction in reading (e. g., McVee, Dunsmore, & Gavalek, 2005), but its usefulness has
also been debated (e.g., Sadoski, Paivio, & Goetz, 1991). There are some attempts to
revisit the schema theory and to reconsider schema as a “transactional” and “embodied”
construct (McVee et al., 2005, p. 531), followed by the critiques of both schema theory

and the attempts to reposition the schema construct within a socio-cultural perspective

23

(Krasny, Sadoski, & Paivio, 2007). McVee and colleagues draw attention to the socio-
cultural origins of schema, while Krasny and colleagues perceive the very assumption of

the schema existence as embodied a fallacy.

Bartlett (1995), associated with the concept of schema through his theory of
remembering, discusses schema as a socio-cultural construct in origin. Bartlett argues
that memories are personal but also carry tendencies of a social group. For instance, he
gives an example of a herdsman in South Afiica who remembered all the details in nine
cattle transactions, together with cattle description, persons involved, and price,
conducted one year earlier by his employer. Bartlett concludes that what a person
remembers in detail might be of great interest to a particular social group that a person

belongs to although not necessarily of great interest to that person.

Bartlett (1995) was well aware of the problems associated with the concept of
schema. He considered using the concept of “active, developing patterns” in place of a
“schema” but was equally unsatisfied with the term “patterns” (p. 201). In thinking about
active and developing patterns, Bartlett seems closer to Kant’s original thinking about
schema as a process of, not only a product of, imagination (Kant, 1882; 1885). Therefore,
the attempts to reposition and revise the concept of schema seem to address a problem
that has been dealt with for quite some time, but not adequately resolved, especially in
theorizing reading. As Bartlett hoped to advance our knowledge of mental representations
based on memory, reading theorists hoped to use the concept of schema in reading to
explain mental representations based on the interaction of the text with our prior
knowledge. While Bartlett (1995) proposed that schema represents “an active

organization of past reactions, or of experiences, which must always be supposed to be

24

operating in any well-adapted organic response”, this dynamic aspect was lost in the
theories of reading where schema seems to serve as a replacement for the concept of prior

knowledge (p. 201).

Moving away fiom the concepts of patterns and schema as static, Spiro (2002)
suggests that assembling prior knowledge and experiences, rather than retrieving them,
better captures the ways people apply their knowledge to new situations, including
reading. Spiro’s line of thinking is closer to Bartlett’s original thinking about
reconstruction rather than the reproduction of past experiences. From the perspective of
online reading and the structure of hypertext, Kintsch suggests drinking about how to
hang new information on “hooks” in the long-term memory and to stimulate reader
activity in this way (Kintsch, 1998, pp. 328-329). One of the questions posed by Kintsch
(1998), “How does one create an active learner?” remains one of the central questions to

the field of reading and education in general (p. 330).

Reading as text comprehension applied to online reading. The application of
the Construction-Integrationist (CI) model to online comprehension (Salmerén, Cafias,
Kintsch, & Fajardo, 2005) reveals that reader’s strategies may play an important role in
reading hypertext. Salmerén and colleagues hypothesized that because the text base
representation consists of linguistic information drawn from the original text (as opposed
to a macro structure), the number and the order of various links influences the
information representation of the text base. They also noted that research with print text

and hypertext with high and low knowledge readers has yielded heterogeneous results.

Salmerén and colleagues designed two experiments to test the hypothesis that the

amount of information read by a reader affects the text base and that the order of reading

25

 

the text influences the situation model. Specifically, the researchers hypothesized that the
number of nodes accessed influences mainly the construction of the text base whereas the
transition between the nodes is critical for the construction of the situation model. Forty-
one undergraduate students participated in the first experiment. The students read an
expository hypertext (Flesh-Kincaid grade level = 12) about atmosphere pollution. The
hypertext had 24 nodes (hyperlinks) and 3,855 words. Participants had to access the

nodes by clicking on the titles provided in the overview of the hypertext.

The analysis took into account: coherence of the nodes (based on Latent Semantic
Analysis), prior knowledge pre-test on eight true/false questions, 22 true/false text-based
questions, cued association task (write down the first three concepts among 24 that first
come to mind, these were later compared to an expert matrix), and 10 true/false inference
questions that required participants to relate information from at least two nodes. The
researchers used a quasi-experimental design with reading order and different nodes
accessed as independent variables and text-based questions, cued association, and
inference questions as dependent variables. Results showed the number of the nodes
accessed Significantly predicted the score on the text-based questions. Text-based scores
increased as the number of nodes increased. A follow-up regression analysis of the two
groups based on their prior knowledge revealed that the effect of node access was
Significant for low knowledge readers but not for high knowledge readers. None of the

analyses showed significant results for the cued association scores or inference questions.

The second hypothesis tested was that reading order would influence
comprehension. Three main patterns (linear order, top down path, and a combination of

both) were identified. Participants following the linear order had better cued association

26

and inference scores than those following top-down path order and mixed order. To
account for the possible prior knowledge effect, two ANOVAS were performed with prior
knowledge as a covariate. Participants did not differ in prior knowledge; however, they
differed on the ntunber of the nodes accessed. The first group (linear order, top-down
path) accessed more nodes and followed a more coherent path than the other two groups.
Differences due to the reading order were based on two variables: nodes accessed and
coherence between node transitions. In this experiment the reading order seemed to be
independent of the prior knowledge of the reader but the authors could not make strong
conclusions because of the limited number of participants per group. They therefore

designed the second experiment.

In the second experiment, different overviews of the hypertext provided different
coherent organization patterns of the text, based on the different position of links. The
same hypertext was used as in Experiment 1 but two different overviews were developed:
one had the highest coherence between transitions when reading from left to right and
from top to bottom, while for the second overview the opposite was true (i.e., the reading
order of the paths mentioned resulted in the lowest coherence).

Participants were grouped based on their prior knowledge and reading order as
follows: low knowledge/low coherence (21 participants); low knowledge/high coherence
(16); high knowledge/low coherence (11), and high knowledge/high coherence (19). The
students with low knowledge benefited more from a high coherence order of the links,
while the opposite was true for students with high knowledge. The dependent variables
were scores on the text-based questions and on the cued association task. In Experiment

2, time was not limited to 20 minutes as in the first experiment; rather, participants could

27

 

decide how much time they would spend reading the hypertext. Correlation analysis
showed no significant relationship between reading time and any of the comprehension
variables.

In agreement with the previous experiment, the effects of knowledge and
coherence did not appear when considering all participants without taking into account
the reading order. The analysis that took into account the reading order (low and high
coherence), showed that participants with low knowledge performed better on the cued
association task when following a strategy leading to high coherence whereas the
opposite was found for participants with high knowledge.

The experiments confirmed the hypothesis that the amount of information read
influences the construction of the text-base while the reading order influences mainly the
construction of the situation model. As the researchers themselves noted, this finding is
not counterintuitive and may seem obvious. They nonetheless thought it was important to
document how reading strategies influence hypertext comprehension because failure to
control reading strategies may mask effects related to text characteristics.

It appears that the characteristics of learners as they relate to their reading
strategies, their prior knowledge, and the hypertext design (in terms of coherence),
influence online reading comprehension. Reading order leading to high text coherence
might benefit students with low knowledge, while students with high knowledge might
benefit from low text coherence. Teachers may benefit from this discussion when
designing inquires on the Web by examining the hypertext structure prior to instruction,
especially when teaching younger students with low prior knowledge. This line of

research seems relevant for intentionally designed hypertext for K-12.

28

Based on the works of Kintsch and van Dijk (1978) on text comprehension and
Guthrie’s (1988) model on locating information in documents, Protopsaltis and Bouki
(2005) proposed a hypertext reading model. The model contains eleven components: (1)
establish a goal or task, (2) scan the categories of information, (3) read the categories, (4)
build the text base, (5) build the situation-model, (6) use appropriate strategy, (7)
monitor, (8) follow the appropriate path, (9) repeat as many time as necessary, (10)
accomplish goal, and (11) recycle if you fail. Through think-aloud protocols, 22
undergraduate students verbalized their thoughts as they read hypertext about economies
(with no prior courses taken in economics). Subjects were randomly assigned to three
conditions: read to answer specific questions, read to answer general questions, and read
with no instruction. Each session lasted about one hour. The analyses revealed that there
were no significant differences in comprehension based on different reading goals.

Similar to findings in the Salrnerén et a1. (2005) study, the transcripts revealed
three navigational strategies: linear or serial (subjects followed the links in the order of
their presentation), mixed (subjects chose some links in linear fashion but some in
random fashion) and a mixed review, in which the subjects first scanned the document to
see what was available, and then proceeded in the mixed strategy manner. The majority
of the readers followed the linear fashion, perhaps borrowing a strategy from offline
reading. Another factor that influenced the reader’s choice was personal interest. Through
the analysis of the verbal think-aloud protocols, it was clear that some participants chose
links based on their personal interests. For example, one participant reported: “I click on
New Zealand, I am from New Zealand, that’s why I pick New Zealand”; or, another

similar explanation was given for choosing another link related to Australia: “Sorry, I am

29

 

just cmious about Australia, because that’s where I am fiom”; or, “. . .reading each title in
terms if anything grabs my interest” (Protopsaltis & Bouki, 2005, p.165). The authors
concluded that there is a need for more systematic focus on interest and motivation in
reading in general and in hypertext environments in particular.

Based on the work on text comprehension and hypertext reading, it appears to be
important to control for prior knowledge, navigational patterns, and motivation. It seems
that high knowledge learners engaged in opening a number of links form a solid text-base
and a situation model. The research suggests that motivation is also a variable that should
be controlled in studies on hypertext.

The role of working memory (WM) in reading Long- (LWM) and short-term
working memory (WM) have been studied as integral to the processes of reading and
learning. One of the most influential models of memory has been advanced by Baddeley
(e.g., Baddeley, 1998; Baddeley, 2000; Badelley et al., 1985). Baddeley’s original model
consisted of a central executive component, a phonological loop (processing verbal
speech input), and a visual-spatial Sketchpad (assumed to be capable of manipulating
visual and spatial input). The central executive processes seem to be involved whenever
stored information needs to be manipulated, integrated or involved in some other more
complex processes than simple representation and maintenance (RepovS & Baddeley,
2006). Baddeley (2000) also included an “episodic buffer” in his revised model, which
serves to temporarily store information held in a multimodal system and to connect
information from the short-term storage and from long-term memory into integrated

representations or episodes.

30

 

Several studies indicate that students with reading difficulties may lack the ability
to retain information in memory while processing the same or new information (e. g.,
Swanson, 1999). Swanson, Trainin, Necoechea, and Hammill (2003) note that the ability
to temporarily retain information while processing other incoming information is a skill
critical to many reading activities. This skill may be particularly important for hypertext
reading in view of its multimodality.

WM processing applied to online reading Wenger and Payne (1996) started
their considerations of processing hypertext based on studies of individual readers’
performance that go beyond traditional reading to include performance on other cognitive
tasks (e. g., memory span or speed of accessing the meaning of words in memory). They
predicted that if there was any relationship between the performance on the working
memory span tasks and performance while reading hypertext, it would show up in the
traditional measures of reading performance. The authors also considered spatial-
relational processing as important in reading hypertext, but not necessarily in printed text.
They hypothesized that if this indeed is the case, this would be shown through the
memory for relational structure and efficiency of hypertext use (as indexed by the
repeated number of nodes). The latter considerations were supported by their earlier
work.

Their study is of particular relevance to the present study because they
investigated the processes that support comprehension and retention of hypertext
information and the possible ways in which these processes would differ fi'om those
involved in the comprehension and retention of traditional text. The tasks implemented in

this study therefore included those tasks that have been predictive of traditional reading

31

 

performance but also those that could potentially reveal a relationship between spatial
and relational abilities while reading hypertext. All the tasks were presented on the
computer screen. Each session lasted about one hour and assessed traditional reading
comprehension and hypertext comprehension. The study was correlational in design and
conducted with 22 undergraduate students. Hypertext was drawn from scientific and
technical publications with minor revisions for length. Texts were segmented into nodes
and each node was assigned a short title based on the first sentence of the paragraph.

For the working memory span task in traditional reading, subjects read declarative
sentences, 13-16 words in length, in sets of two sentences. They were prompted to
verbally recall the final word in each sentence. The number of sentences in each set then
increased in increments after the students recalled 100% of the final words of the
sentences for the set Size three times.

For the lexical decision tasks, 80 words, 80 pseudohomophones, and 80
nonhomophonic nonwords were used as stimuli; all were single-syllable items. From this
pool, 16 words and 8 nonwords were randomly selected and presented on the screen.
Subjects had to decide whether the item presented was a word or a nonword. Studies of
performance on lexical decision tasks have been consistently related to reading
performance in both adults and children (e. g., Baddeley et al. 1985). However, results
from studies with nonword homophones have demonstrated that performance on certain
types of nonword homophones (e. g., froot is a nonword homophone of fruit) may be
related to other measures of information processing ability, but not related to reading
comprehension (e.g., Baddeley et al., 1985). Wenger and Payne predicted that if reading

hypertext relies on the types of information processing tapped by lexical decision tasks in

32

 

the same manner as reading printed text, then there would be a relationship between
lexical decision task performance and performance while reading.

For the relational task, students had to match the letters either in “physical match”
or “name match” from a pool of 80 pairs of letters. Two types of decision rules are
typically used with this task: the first is a name match rule, which specifies that a match
response should be made when the two letters have the same name (e.g., A and A or A
and a); and the second is a physical match rule, which specifies that a match response
should be made only when the letters have the same name and are presented in the same
case (e.g., A and A or a and a). Studies using the letter matching task have shown that
performance with the name match rule is highly related to reading while performance
with the physical match rule is not (Baddeley et al., 1985). Finally, for the spatial
processing task, the subjects judged whether two bar histograms were the same, with one
presented vertically on the screen and the other one rotated at a 0-, 90-, 180-, or 270-
degree rotation.

To assess the hypertext reading, the subjects were given two minutes to write
down as many node titles as they could remember after reading each hypertext, followed
by responding to 10 multiple-choice comprehension questions (each with four
alternatives). Finally, they were presented with 15 pairs of node titles and were asked to
identify whether these nodes were linked or not in the text they had just read. This final
task probed subjects’ recall of hypertext structure.

The authors concluded that the two patterns of data in their findings allowed
straightforward conclusions. The relationships between the information processing

measures and the hypertext reading measures replicated those documented between

33

 

information processing measures and print reading. For example, choice reaction times
were related only to reading rate, while reading rate was not systematically related to the
other measures of reading performance. The name match for the letters was positively
related to both recall and comprehension. Lexical decisions based on words and
nonwords were related to response time: a shorter response time and a higher-level
accuracy were related to higher reading rates and fewer repeated nodes (indicating the
efficiency of hypertext use). For lexical decisions involving nonwords, there was one
significant result—higher levels of accuracy were associated with higher reading rates.
The implications of the first pattern of findings are that applied research on print reading
could guide hypertext reading. However, there was no significant correlation between the
measure of working memory and any of the measures of reading performance.

The second set of findings relates to the relationship between the spatial
processing task and hypertext reading. Faster response time was associated with higher
reading speed and better comprehension. Higher level of accuracy on the spatial
processing task was associated with better comprehension, better retention Of text
structure, and fewer repeated nodes (i.e., going back to the text in the hypertext). The
authors suggest that the relationship between spatial processing and measures of reading
hypertext are of critical importance because these skills may advantage or disadvantage
some readers. The second pattern confirms the findings about the importance of
navigational patterns of readers. Because faster response is associated with reading speed
and better comprehension, it may be expected that students with LD in reading may need
more time in completing their tasks. However, the finding that the efficiency of hypertext

use (as indexed by the number of repeated nodes) and memory relational structures may

34

 

also contribute to hypertext reading, indicates that instruction in navigational skills may
be of particular importance for students with LD in K-12.

Dual-coding theory. A line of research that departs from the schema approach to
reading is that pursued by Krasny, Sadoski, and Paivio (2007), who propose a different
approach to mental representations conceptualized as a dual coding theory (DCT). Paivio
and colleagues object to granting schema a form and substance and suggest that mental
representations are formed through language (linguistic code) and imagery (nonlinguistic
code) (Paivio, 2007; Sadoski, Paivio, & Goetz, 1991). These two codes are viewed as
separate but interconnected. The DCT proposes that images evoke both a perceptual code
and a verbal code in memory (which is why, they note, visuals enhance learning). It
should be noted that these researchers do not limit mental images to visual, but also
include auditory, haptic, and affective modalities (which is why the term “dual” in the
“dual coding theory” might be misleading). The DCT critiques the CI model as relying
on only amodal propositions in text encoding (Sadoski, 1999). Kintsch (1988) indeed
noted that it would be desirable to include in the CI model nonpropositional
representations (e.g., spatial-visual representations).

Dual-coding theory applied to online reading and learning Mayer (2008)
proposes that multimedia literacy is based on the dual-coding assumptions: in essence, he
suggests that people understand more with pictures and words than with pictures alone.
Mayer and colleagues confirmed this hypothesis through nine out of nine experiments
with university students studying scientific explanations. The median effect size was
1.50, considered a large effect. Further, in 21 separate tests, students performed better in

a transfer text when they learned from pictures and spoken texts than from pictures and

35

 

printed text. The median effect size was 0.97, also considered large. Mayer (2008) argues
that the format in which the word is presented matters; printed words compete with
pictures for visual processing.

Elaborating on dual-channel assumptions, Mayer and Moreno (2003) proposed a
theory of multimodal learning, where in addition to suggesting two separate information-
processing channels for verbal and visual material, they also stress limitations of
cognitive capacity and active processing as important in multimedia learning. Briefly, if
learners pay attention, some of the words and pictures enter working memory and are

further processed. The resulting verbal and pictorial representations are integrated with l

 

each other and with relevant prior knowledge from long-term memory. Verbal and visual
channels have a limited amount Of processing capacity available, while learning requires
substantial cognitive processing in both channels. Mayer and Moreno (2003) propose
ways to reduce cognitive load in multimedia learning, which has relevance for the design
of multimedia instruction (see Table 3 in Mayer & Moreno [2003] for a description of
related experiments and effect sizes, p. 46).

Some of the limitations of Mayer’s line of research were noted by Dalton and
Proctor (2008). They suggest that laboratory-based experiments in which college students
view a 30-Second animation and are then tested for comprehension may not apply to
students’ inquiries or in-depth learning, and may not hold true for K-12 students. It seems
therefore important to extend the research to students in K-12 settings.

From the perspective of reading hypertext on the Web, it seems important to note
that in this environment icons function as symbols that stand for something else (see the

screenshot and its description on page 6). The Web brings another code to be broken: that

36

of a symbol that may also fimction as a hyperlink. This dual meaning of some icons may
complicate the reading of hypertext, especially for younger readers. For example, if an
elementary student sees an icon that represents a computer, this young reader may guess
that this icon might bring him to a game rather than to an article about energy. Icons are
numerous and sometimes idiosyncratic (e.g., reflecting the Web-author[s]’ semiotic
understandings). Consequently, prior knowledge might not necessarily offer an adequate
understanding of icons. Virtually nothing is known about students’ reading of icons on
the Web. Semiotic perspectives of reading may lead to a better understanding of reading
hypertext. Some researchers (e.g., Kress, 2003; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006) suggest
adopting a semiotic and visual approach to literacy as opposed to linguistic and this body
of work is discussed next.

Semiotic literacy model Modality considerations, especially as they relate to
texts and hypertexts, are examined in the line of research that aims to refrarne the
theorizing of reading within a semiotic framework. Kress and van Leeuwen (2006)
distinguish visual and verbal structures as two modes that can be used to express
meanings but do not view them as simply alternative means of representing “the same
thing” (p. 76). As these authors adopt a semiotic rather than a linguistic approach to
reading, they stress the multimodality of texts. Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) note that
written texts involve more than language—material (e. g., paper or metal), layout (e.g., on
a page or a computer screen), and medium of writing (e. g., dots of ink or pixels), just as
spoken “text” is visual (e. g., accompanied by gestures and facial expressions), and not
just verbal. The “anchor” for a message may be an image rather than the written text

when both are represented on a page or a screen (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006, p. 43).

37

 

Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) extend their semiotic approach to literacy to work on the
grammar of visual design as an attempt to address reading images and to build a visual
literacy theory as a complement to a theory of language. In addition, these authors draw
attention to affective aspects of human practices as not being separate from other

cognitive activities, a point also stressed by the proponents of the dual coding theory
(e.g., Sadoski, 1999).

Semiotic literacy model applied. The application of a visual literacy model and
communication as sign production and interpretation has been called a multimodal social
semiotic approach to learning (Stein, 2008, p. 875; Kress, Jewitt, Ogborn, & Tsatsarelis,
2001). Studies conducted from that perspective often employ qualitative design. For
example, Ware and Warschauer (2005) adopted semiotic as well as linguistic analysis of
multimedia texts produced by youth in two programs: DUSTY, an afterschool program,
and a laptop initiative in one school district in California. The analyses of students’ texts
revealed some commonalities across multimedia texts produced and included frequent
mixing of visual, graphic, linguistic, and other semiotic modes. Linguistically, students
tended to write in a limited amount of syntactically complex sentences as their writing

was akin to their oral language.

Through their case studies, Ware and Warschauer (2005) describe youth involved
in innovative literacy practices. For example, one nine-year old student excelled in the
genre of digital stories in which she blended sound, voiceover, printed text, image, and
video. She demonstrated a strong sense of audience awareness: “The more details, the
better the story is going to be, and the other people are going to be so interested in your

movie...” (p. 437). The story was about her visit to the zoo and a baby tiger that escaped

38

 

through her legs. In building a portrait of her main character, the tiger, she combined
different modes: to the linguistic text mode she added a voiceover to describe the tiger as
“so smart because he knew where all the animals were...” and to suggest even further

how smart he was she enhanced his image with a cap and diploma (p. 43 7).

The authors also describe third and fourth graders equipped with laptops, wireless
high-speed Internet access, and multiple software programs for a task to prepare second
graders for their statewide math exam. Students developed a direction booklet and digital
videos with explanations to create age-appropriate instructional materials. Such
multimodal pedagogy is meant to draw students into academic projects and to bridge an
often perceived disconnect between the literacy practices that students engage in and
outside school. As the authors themselves noted, we know very little about the transfer of
multimodal texts and projects into conventional literacy. At the same time, it should also
be noted that conventional literacy as it is tested on statewide exams does not capture the
skills needed for 213t century life and work (e.g., McKenna, 1998; Mikulecky, & Kirkley,

1998; Ware & Warschauer, 2005).

New literacies and reading. Although reading online does not occupy a central
place in reading instruction today, it will undoubtedly occupy an increasingly more
important role in view of the fact that changing contexts for reading are here to stay (e. g.,
reading on the Web). New literacies imply new social practices created through the use of
technologies in which skills, strategies, and dispositions that are associated with offline
reading do not necessarily coincide completely with those of online reading (Coiro, 2007;
Leu, Zawalinski, Castek, Banerjee, Housand, Liu, & O’Neil, 2006). As new technologies

emerge, the nature of literacy changes. Coiro et al. (2008) advocate bringing a set of

39

 

multiple perspectives to the development of understanding of new literacies. Coiro and
colleagues also advocate for treating the Web as a distinctive context for literacy rather
than imposing theoretical frameworks from other contexts and perspectives. Their stance
is of particular relevance to the present study in which the context for reading and
learning is situated on the Web.

The prerequisites for successful offline reading may not hold true for online
reading. For example, Coiro (2007) suggests that, traditionally, we might predict that the
lower levels of prior knowledge would impede comprehension, but the findings of her
study described in the next section indicate that this is not necessarily the case in online
reading.

New literacies applied to online reading Coiro (2007) investigated the extent to
which new reading comprehension skills and strategies may be required on the Internet.
The sample included 109 seventh graders of various ethnic backgrounds and reading
achievement levels. An Online Reading Comprehension Assessment (ORCA) with
Scenarios I and II was designed so that the students could learn more about the
respiratory system and the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning. Tasks included: (a)
locating, (b) evaluating, (c) synthesizing, and (d) communicating information online

using the Internet (to two fictitious treasure hunt creators).

Three independent variables were entered in the following order: Offline reading
comprehension ability, prior knowledge, and online reading comprehension ability
(ORCA-Scenario I). Results of a hierarchical regression analysis indicated performance
on one measure of online reading comprehension ability (ORCA-Scenario I) accounted

for a significant amount of variance (57.9%) in performance on a second measure of

40

 

online reading comprehension ability (ORCA-Scenario 11) over and above offline reading
comprehension ability and a measure of topic-specific knowledge (in that order). There
was no significant interaction between offline reading comprehension and prior
knowledge and no significant interaction between offline reading comprehension and the
first measure of online reading comprehension (ORCA—Scenario 1). However, there was
an interaction between prior knowledge and online reading comprehension ability.
Further analysis through simple regression repeated with each new variable indicated that
(a) among students who have high levels of online reading comprehension skills (as
measured by performance on ORCA-Scenario 1), prior knowledge did not appear to
significantly affect performance on ORCA-Scenario II; (b) among students with average
levels of online reading comprehension skills on ORCA-Scenario I, prior knowledge did
not appear to significantly affect performance on ORCA-Scenario II'although it
approached significance; and c) among students with low levels of online reading
comprehension skills on ORCA-Scenario 1, prior knowledge had a positive and
significant effect on performance on ORCA-Scenario II. Coiro concluded that higher
levels of online reading comprehension skills might help compensate for lower levels of
prior knowledge in online reading environments when students are required to locate,

critically evaluate, synthesize, and communicate information from the Internet.

Coiro (2007) then focused on three students who read at different levels of online
proficiency and had different offline reading achievement to explore the nature of online
reading comprehension through retrospective think-aloud protocols. It appeared that low-
knowledge students with high online reading skills were able to use the Internet to

quickly locate the background information they needed and then to proceed with the

41

 

online reading task. On the other hand, Coiro suggests that some high-knowledge readers
might not be able to take advantage of additional learning opportunities simply because
they may lack the online skills to locate information in the first place. Readers with both
low prior knowledge and low online reading ability might struggle even more in the
networked contexts. Coiro concluded that if these findings were to be sustained in
additional work, this could be cause for much concern among readers with lower online
reading comprehension skills. The Coiro study complicates research findings that seem to
imply that offline reading competencies will predict online reading competencies. The
present study, which controls for both offline and online reading competencies, may be

informative in that respect.

Cognitive flexibility theory. Spiro and Jehng (1990) advocate teaching and
learning with computers. Complex concepts and subject matter are viewed as ill-
structured domains, which require cognitive flexibility in learning. By “cognitive
flexibility,” Spiro and Jehng mean the “ability to spontaneously restructure one’s
knowledge, in many ways, in adaptive response to radically changing situational
demands (both within and across knowledge application situations)” (p. 165). Although
this theory is not a reading theory but rather a theory of knowledge acquisition and
application, it also includes some aspects of reading as a prerequisite to knowledge
acquisition and text interpretation within the hypertext environment.

Hypertext in the studies of Spiro and colleagues (e.g., Feltovich, Spiro, &
Coulson, 1989; Spiro, Coulson, Feltovich, & Anderson, 1988; Spiro & Jehng, 1990;
Spiro, Feltovich, Jacobson, & Coulson, 1991) stands for intentionally designed texts that

are created as multidimensional and Web-like in structure. Because texts are

42

 

multidimensional, they may support multiple interpretations. Learners should be
nonetheless be encouraged to support their claims with evidence rather than Offering
interpretations without warrant. Reading in this account is tied to forming mental
representations of text through assembling rather than retrieving schema, or background
knowledge and experiences. The structure of hypertext, with different paths built into it,
offers the possibility to explore concepts and topics through the construction (along
different paths) of multiple texts. Multiple representations promote flexible thinking
because information is presented and re-presented in different contexts.

The basic premise of intentionally structured hypertext can only partially apply to
the Web environment which is not intentionally designed to support learning. However,
the cognitive flexibility theory forces us to consider how different environments for
reading and learning (e.g., linear versus multidimensional texts) may offer different
learning experiences, and may also require and foster different skills and patterns of
thinking (Spiro, 2002). How offline and online environments may impact learning is
described next.

Cognitive flexibility theory applied: Reading on the Web versus in the
library. A study by Roy, Taylor, and Chi (2003) illustrates how different strategies for
reading hypertext and different contexts for learning (the Web and the library) may result
in different knowledge gains. Roy and colleagues conducted a study with 28 eighth
graders and examined how students learned specific information when performing online
searches on the Web as opposed to offline searches in the library. The target domain was
a “mosquito-hunting behavior” (i.e., how mosquitoes find their prey) and students’

learning was assessed through a pretest and posttest. There was no significant difference

43

 

on the pretest in target knowledge, but there was a significant difference on the posttest

regardless of the condition (the Web or the library) or gender.

Students in the Web condition demonstrated larger knowledge gains than those in
the library condition, although the difference was not statistically significant. On the
other hand, the knowledge scores on target-related information (as opposed to target-

specific) were greater in the library condition. One of the conclusions of the study was

 

a
that the Web might be an efficient means for searching and finding information for a I
well-defmed set of information, but that the library may provide for more elaborate and

contextual information. In addition, boys, who scanned through many document excerpts ‘l

on the Web, performed better in the allotted time than girls, who actually opened and
thoroughly browsed through some of the linked documents. The authors suggested that
girls could benefit fi'om instruction in more efficient searches for information (a point to

be noted here is that the tasks were performed within specific time constraints).

It seems that information search conducted on the Web versus in the library may
create different contexts that differ not only in modality (online versus offline) but also in
the types of search for information (scanning versus browsing). The search for
information on the Web with a specific focus on K-12 students is discussed in the next

two major sections.

Summary. The findings of a number of studies that examined online and offline
reading demonstrate some similarities and some differences between the two processes.
For example, reading ability, skills, and strategies might influence text comprehension
both in reading offline printed texts and reading online hypertexts. However, the very

concept of text changes with online reading. The number and the order of the hyperlinks

44

accessed may lead to various texts and, ultimately, to various text constructions. The
navigational paths might vary with interest and motivation.

Prior knowledge might influence text construction and aid comprehension, as well
as the skills in navigation of hypertext. It seems that readers with low prior knowledge
and low online reading skills might struggle in online reading comprehension, while high
online reading skills might mediate poor reading skills. The efficiency of hypertext use
(as indexed by the number of opened and repeated hyperlinks) may also contribute to
hypertext reading and comprehension, which indicates that instruction in navigation is an
important consideration in information problem solving on the Web.

Earlier approaches to offline reading (e. g., Rosenblatt, 1978) have already
suggested that a reader and a text are in a transactional relationship. Online reading seems
to add layers to that perspective for several reasons: (1) interactivity is built into online
electronic texts such as hypertexts, adding to transactional planes; (2) links may lead to
texts that are written by different authors; (3) the interpretation of visual stimuli may aid
the construction of meaning but it also may distract reading, especially if one engages in
navigation within and across texts; (4) critical reading pertains to detecting and
evaluating relevant information but also ignoring irrelevant information (unrelated pop-
ups, ads, etc.); and (5) decoding words, as well as icons, seems to be a prerequisite to
creating a “micro” model during reading, while a new set of strategies may be needed to
create a “macro” level of text understanding.

K-12 Students and the World Wide Web

A body of literature on children’s searches for information on the Web has been

rapidly growing within the last decade (Kuiper et al., 2005). Children increasingly use the

45

 

Web as an information resource for school assignments (Eagleton, Guinee, & Langlais,
2003; Jackson, 1996). Lyons, Hoffman, Krajcik, and Soloway (1997) point out some
advantages of using the Web in classroom inquiries: (a) students have access to current
content which may be presented in a dynamic form (video/sound/text) and therefore may
be more attractive than a textbook; (b) a computer offers immediate access to primary

source materials; and (c) online publishing and collaboration may increase student

 

fl
motivation.
There are many Web pages designed with K-12 users in mind; however, the Web
was not designed originally for use in K-12 classrooms, and children have to learn how to \

navigate it. Studies show that students need help in the process of learning how to
navigate the Web. For example, Lyons et al. (1997), who observed two pairs of middle
and high school students, found that the choice of keywords, spellings, and the use of
Boolean searches (e. g., using a string of search words) caused many problems with the
students’ Web searches during science inquiries. On the other hand, students may search
for information with logical key words spelled correctly, for example “tornadoes”,
without finding information about the specific mechanics of tornadoes (Lyons et al.,
1997, p. 20). The same study showed that a pair of middle school students spent four
days searching for information on a hydrologic cycle, and in the end, resorted to the
library. Although both pairs of students had access to “places to start”, the start pages

created by librarians, the students went directly to the search engines.

Studies also reveal that the use of information may be problematic even when
students have developed adequate technological skills (e.g., Hoffman, Krajcik, &

Soloway, 2003; Wallace, Kupperman, Krajcik, & Soloway, 2000). For example, students

46

may search and collect information, but not really consider how they will eventually use
the information to answer their questions. Also, students sometimes change their topic or
question if they cannot find the precise information they are looking for (Fidel et al.,
1999; Wallace etal., 2000). This strategy also has been observed with searches for

information within traditional texts (e. g., Dreher, 1994).

Pifarré, GOdia, and Martorell (2006) found out that students do not change and
adapt their search strategies based on different tasks. The authors asked sixty-eight 13-
and 14-year-students to perform three different taslm focused on the planet Mars. The

first was a “fact-finding task” (search for specific data), the second was a “search and

 

select general information task” (students were asked to synthesize information), and the
third was a “give opinion and arguments” task (students were asked to support their
opinion regarding evidence supporting past life on Mars and the possibility of future
human colonies on Mars). Students were much more successful on fact-fmding tasks than
on the other two tasks which required selection and re-organization of information.
Although the other two tasks were clearly more elaborate, the authors noted that students
did not alter their search strategies to the different task demands. One of the authors’
recommendations for instructional design was to develop scaffolded instructional
activities to support and develop more effective Internet searches and strategies for
information problem solving tasks.

In contrast, Schacter, Chung, and Dorr (1998) concluded on the basis of an
experimental study with 32 fifth and sixth graders that children were more successful
with open-ended tasks than fact-fmding tasks. The students were given two tasks, one

"well defined" (e.g., What are the three types of crime that happen most in California?)

47

and one "ill defined" (e.g., What should be done to reduce crime in California?). Students
were far more successful with the ill-defmed tasks than with the well-defined tasks. For
example, only two out of 32 children found information to respond to the well-defmed
task. On the other hand, 30 out of 32 students found information to respond to ill-defmed
task. The authors concluded that searching for precise, concrete information makes high
demands on search strategies. Vague tasks seemed to be more suitable for browsing,
preferred by these students, to keyword searches. An ill—defmed task also implies that
there are more potential correct answers. These contrasting findings suggest that the type
of task in itself is not sufficient for predicting students’ performance. It is also possible
that students in Schacter et al.’s (1998) study were more knowledgeable about the topic
of crime in their state (e.g., through TV) and were able to apply prior knowledge to the
topic, as Opposed to the topic of life on Mars, which is based much more on conjecture.
The students might also have been more motivated to investigate a topic related to their
lives.

Another study that examined searching for information was performed by Bilal
(2002). She constructed searches around three different tasks, fact-finding, research-
oriented, and self-generated, with 22 seventh graders from three science classes. The
method provided empirical data about student searches for information in Yahooligans!
search engine. Bilal recorded cursor movements, including clicking and scrolling, with
the Lotus ScreenCam (http://www.lotus.com), a Windows-based software package that
records, saves, and replays cursor movements. Exit interviews revealed that most children
(87%) enjoyed Yahooligans! search engine due to ease of use, ability to perform keyword

searching, ability to visit different Web sites, availability of graphics, and fun.

48

 

The findings indicated that 50% of students were successful on the fact-fmding
task, 69% succeeded “partially” on the research-oriented task, and 73% were successful
on the self-generated task. The high percentage of success on the self- generated task was
possibly related to the students’ increased motivation as they chose the topic of their own
interest but possibly also due to the simplicity of some of the chosen topics. In addition,
students received assistance from the researcher and media specialist in narrowing down
topics, which also might have contributed to the students’ success on self-generated tasks.

In a study by Fidel et al. (1999), observations of 8 high school student volunteers

on their searches for information on various topics showed that students did not adjust

 

their search behavior to take into account a new task. Students tended to rely on their past
successful experiences in selecting Web sites. Although this approach might seem
reasonable, it also led some students in this study to search for information on inadequate
sites. For example, Fidel and colleagues noted that a student searched for horticultural
information about a plant (new assignment) within the URL of a daily local newspaper
given for the previous assignment. Students in this study were glad to be told “where to
start searching”, in other words, the best words to use in the search box (p. 28). Students
valued the speed with which they could find information. Yet, students also felt frustrated
if the Web did not produce results quickly enough. Nevertheless, a number of studies
show that most students like using the Web despite the problems they may encounter
(e.g., Fidel et al. 1999; Large & Beheshti, 2000; Ng & Gunstone, 2002).

Wallace, Kupperman, Krajcik, and Soloway (2000), during their observation of 8
middle school students working in pairs on a six-week ecology unit, noted that students

did not seem to know how to broaden or narrow their searches. Students heard the terms

49

such as “narrowing” or “broadening” the search during instruction and mentioned these
terms while performing searches, but kept using the same keywords in practice. In
addition, Wallace and colleagues noted a tendency of students to search for concrete and
ostensibly “right” answers.

Studies reveal that students tend to decide on the choices of Web sites based on
specific titles without reading the descriptions (Kafai & Bates, 1997; Lyons et al., 1997).
This strategy may limit information sources and, consequently, the information acquired.
Students’ prior knowledge of both the task and the domain is considered to be one of the
factors influencing the search results (e.g., Fidel et al., 1999). It seems that prior
knowledge makes it easier to formulate adequate keywords and to evaluate information
(e.g., Hirsh, 1999).

Although some studies (e.g., Fidel et al., 1999; Marchionini, 1989) found that
older elementary children were more successful in their searches than younger children,
Solomon (1994) suggests that instruction and the curriculum (e.g., integrated language
arts curriculum) might be more influential than the grade level. In his study, the
sophistication of the fifth graders’ strategies with the Online Public Access Catalog
(OPAC) was found to be less impressive than that of children in lower grades, which he
related to the curriculum and instruction (Solomon, 1994). Solomon’s study employed a
naturalistic design as he observed almost 500 children in a library over a year, during 35
observations each lasting a school day. The fifth graders were given clear-cut
assignments by the teachers who mostly followed traditional subj ect-centered curriculum
(e. g., “Turn in a written report with the following pieces of information on your state”).

The assignments were oriented to fact finding Without emphasis on the application of

50

 

facts or critical thinking. While the success rate for fifth graders was high, they were less
able to recognize and respond to breakdowns in their searches than younger students
(first through fourth graders). Younger students were given more open-ended
assignments such as a report on a planet or an animal of choice. Various habitats and
foods of particular animals were then talked about in the classroom, in addition to writing
about them. Eight percent of the students had LD. Their performance did not differ from
the rest of the student population. This study seems to add an important aspect to
information search studies because it indirectly points to the fact that students develop
habits of mind through the curriculum and instruction that they also bring to the area of
information searches.

Studies by Wolf, Brush, and Saye (2003) and Herring (2006) found that specific
models, such as the Big6 Skills and PLUS (Purpose, Location, Use, and Self-evaluation),
were useful for students’ research assignments. The Big6 Skills approach is often used in
the U. S. schools, while the PLUS model has been used by schools in the UK, South
Afiica, Australia, and New Zealand.

Wolf and colleagues (2003) implemented the Big6 Skills with 18 eighth-grade
students during a social studies project. The authors sought to discover what effects the
Big6 Skills model might have on the metacognitive skills of the students. The students’
task was to search for information and write a one-page newspaper article about events
surrounding the Civil Rights movement, with a focus on the Selma March. One of the
researchers acted as participant-observer during the study. The classroom teacher
provided support for non-instructional issues as they arose during the study. The content

of the African-American civil rights movement had not previously been addressed in the

51

curriculum. Also, the journalistic style of writing was not a format previously assigned by
the classroom teacher. Therefore, the prompts were designed to support students in their
search for the information needed for newspaper articles: people involved, goals of the
people involved, causes of the event, description of what happened, opinions and quotes
in favor of and opposed to the event. The study was conducted over twelve 85-minute
sessions.

Data were collected through a tracking feature that recorded students’ navigation
paths, a response journal to open-ended questions posed after each session, exit
interviews, and students’ graded (using a rubric) papers. The rubric used to grade the
students’ papers was developed in consultation with the classroom teacher and included
steps needed to complete the article (task analysis), locating and obtaining information
from the database (location and access), applying information to the sections of the article
(use of information), and synthesizing the information into a final product (synthesis).
Two neutral scorers assessed each newspaper article using the scoring rubric with inter-
rater reliability of .91. Despite little direct instruction about writing newspaper-style
articles, most articles contained information pertaining to the five Ws (who, what, where,
when, and why). Some of the articles exceeded the one-page requirement set by the
investigators. Wolf and colleagues suggest that the Big6 Skills enhanced the level of
engagement the students had with both the content and their writing. Using qualitative
analysis, the written artifacts, journals, and exit interviews revealed that students
benefited fi'om implementing the Big6 Skills in their search and extraction of
information. Although the teacher was skeptical that students could write a successful

newspaper article without an adult acting as an editor, students’ work fulfilled the

52

 

requirements of the task (one-page newspaper article), which was a new task to them.
Wolf and colleagues (2003) advocate for the Big6 Skill approach as a “general scaffold”
as opposed to a “situation-specific scaffold” that students have to rely on each time they
encounter a problem because “such specific-target scaffolds may support only one
portion of the metacognitive spectrum of Skills” (p. 8). Indeed, journals and interviews
revealed that some students viewed the Big6 Skills to be useful for other subjects, such as
English, in addition to history inquires.

Similarly, Herring (2006) reported that the PLUS model provided students with a
scaffold for school research assignments. The PLUS model consists of a booklet that
provides guidance for completing an assignment. Students were introduced to the PLUS
model in the library. Questionnaires revealed that, out of 52 students, 24 answered
positively, stating that the booklet guide was beneficial to them; 18 students made no
response and therefore it is not clear whether they used the booklet or not; 5 students
answered positively but also included a negative aspect to their response; and 5 students
stated that they did not use the booklet.

Those students who responded positively acknowledged that the booklet kept
them on track, helped them to plan ahead, and made the process easier because it “divides
research into stages and this makes it easier when you write it up”, and “it's useful—it
helps you with skimming and scanning and this saves you time” (Herring, 2006, p. 15).
The responses also showed that 60% of students preferred to use Web sites in their
information problem solving, 10% preferred to use books and journals, and 30 % did not
have a preference for either. Both the study by Wolf and colleagues and the Herring study

indicate that students could benefit from scaffolded instruction as it seemed to help

53

students develop metacognition about the search for and use of information in different
tasks.

Summary. Research on K-12 students’ Web search behaviors and strategies
shows that children may be enthusiastic about Web searches, but also often have
difficulties in locating relevant information. Students do not always explore the Web with
a plan but rather stay focused on finding one answer to their question, even when tasks
ask for their opinions. Search results seem to be taken as the end point rather than the
beginning of a process of making sense of information gathered. It seems that students
tend to use the same strategies whether they are engaged in fact-based tasks or research-

oriented tasks.

Prior knowledge is an important factor to consider when students search for
information. Prior knowledge of the domain may be relevant in both formulating
appropriate key words and the selection of relevant information. Several studies
suggested that students would benefit from scaffolded instructional activities to support
more effective Web searches and information management to solve different types of
tasks. Both types of skills require training and support. While older students were shown
to be more successful in their searches in some studies, curriculum and instruction may

also have an impact on the development of information problem solving skills.

The Web, as a tool for information searching and learning, seems to motivate
students, offers current content and primary sources, and provides a framework for fact-
finding and open-ended tasks. As an environment for learning, the Web may be both
exciting and frustrating. Overall, a number of studies Show that most students like using

the Web despite the problems they may encounter. Benefits of learning with the Web are

54

less clear as most studies focus on behaviors related to searches for information rather

than learning outcomes.

The findings do not seem to be uniform across studies (e. g., the influence of the
type of a task on the search for information). The review nonetheless reveals a fairly
rapidly growing body of knowledge about K-12 students and their interaction with the
Web. The majority of studies are descriptive in nature. Examining processes calls for an
interpretive framework, imposing some limitations on generalizations because of the

contextualized nature of the research.

K-12 Students with LD and the World Wide Web

Gardner, Wissick, and Schweder (2003) suggest that “one of the most recent and
significant changes to the way we use technology to support instruction for students with
disabilities in classrooms may exist in the use of the World Wide Web” (p. 161). The
Web offers a number of sites and materials that can contribute to students’ active
engagement in learning about social studies (see Okolo, 2005, for a number of Web sites
with digital documents, archives, and projects related to social studies). The Library of
Congress, historical museums, state and national parks, and some universities, offer both

primary and secondary sources (Okolo, 2005).

Within the Library of Congress (www.10c. gov), there are a number of lesson
plans and thinking sheets available for teachers and students to use with different units.
Also, digital archival information is available. For instance, instead of reading about
slavery only in their textbooks, students may read digitized oral accounts of former
slaves. Via hyperlinks, students may occasionally listen to audio files of these stories that

allow them to experience history. Web sites, such as iEARN and KidLink, provide

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opportunities for student collaboration throughout the world. Civics and government Web
sites offer standards and online curriculum materials (http://www.civiced.org) for
teachers. Because students with reading disabilities are often taught social studies and
science in general education classrooms (e.g., Ferretti, MacArthur, & Okolo, 2001;
Okolo, F erretti, & MacArthur, 2007), it is important to examine how the Web can be
used to support the learning of these individuals.

In science education instruction, Kimmel, Deck, and Frazer (2002) suggest that
there is a need for a shift in science instruction to include more dynamic and multisensory
methods that engage and motivate learners. While some students may learn better with
print, some may benefit from additional images and/or sounds (Mayer & Moreno, 2003).
Accommodating different students’ needs is essential when considering students with LD
and may be provided through the Web. There are virtual laboratories and simulations
(e.g., www.biologylab.awlonline.com), virtual dissections (e.g., www.froguts.com), and
science Web-based environments (e. g. WISE — http://wise.berkeley.edu/) that may
facilitate teaching and learning.

Some studies that integrate information processing skills with science content
knowledge acquisition reveal mixed results (e.g., Todd, 1995). Todd (1995) tested the
assumption that information processing skills instruction, integrated into the science
curriculum for ninth graders, contributes to student achievement in a specific subject area
as well as to overall student attitudes and motivation. The sample was drawn from Marist
Sister’s College, a non-govemment, mixed-ability, multicultural high school in Sydney
that enrolled 750 girls. The school's library media specialist and the science teacher, with

expertise in teaching information processing skills, taught and planned units together.

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Todd employed a posttest-only comparison group design to measure the effect of the
“method of instruction” variable on two groups of randomly assigned students: two
science classes of 20 students in each of the treatment groups and two classes of 20 each
in the control groups. The program was built around the six stages of the information
processing process: (1) defining, (2) locating, (3) selecting, (4) organizing, (5) presenting,

and (6) assessing information.

The two classes in the control group followed the state-prescribed curriculum
without integration of information skills instruction and their teachers taught without
collaboration with the school library media specialist. Students’ mastery of science
content and skills was measured by the mid-year and end-of-year science exams. Tests
were devised collectively by the science teachers. As the researcher failed to identify any
suitable test for assessing students’ information skills, a simple skills test was developed
by the research team. Students were presented with scenarios and had 30 minutes to write
their responses. Based on content analysis, students scored a point for each instance that
evidenced an application of one of the six stages of information processing. Both groups
were pretested to establish their academic ability, information processing skills, and
knowledge of science content. The students’ general reasoning ability was also assessed

and attitude measures were administered after each instructional period.

The classes did not show significantly different means for academic ability scores
at the outset of the teaching program. However, both treatment classes showed higher
annual science scores than the control group after the treatment. The “method of
instruction” variable yielded a significant impact on students’ mastery of science content.

Todd (1995) concluded that an integrated information skills approach to teaching and

57

learning had a positive impact on learning outcomes. The treatment classes also showed a
significant improvement in information processing skills on the experimental measure.
Todd concluded that these findings raise the issue of equity in education as it might be
argued that students not provided instruction in integrated information processing skills

are not being given adequate educational Opportunities.

In terms of motivation for schooling, perfonnance-based academic self-concept,
and instructional mastery, there were no significant differences between the groups
overall. The trends identified showed that, in terms of reference-based academic self-
concept, in which students assessed how others viewed their school performance, the
control group scored higher than the treatment group. The treatment group also scored
less favorably in terms of their perceptions of their control over their learning and
development toward independent learning. This finding seems to contradict the picture of
students who enjoy working with the Internet (e.g., Pritchard & Cartwright, 2004). It also
contradicts viewing the engagement in search for information and the Web learning
environment as allowing for greater independence in learning (as opposed to a teacher
lecture or a textbook).

However, the findings also revealed that the effect of information problem solving
instruction did not remain constant across the levels of ability. Students considered below
average did not appear to make any improvement in their science content knowledge
assignment scores in the treatment condition. These findings were not consistent with
Todd’s previous qualitative study of students with disabilities in the same school who
made a considerable improvement in their final science scores after a year of information

problem solving instruction integrated into their science curriculum. The author attributed

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this difference to the fact that students with LD in the earlier study were not in a mixed-
ability class and received instruction in information problem solving skills through
strategies tailored specifically to their learning problems.

Students with LD may lack sufficient skills to learn and benefit from the material
provided on the Web. The exploratory study briefly mentioned before using
informational Web-based texts with six upper elementary students (three general
education students and three students with a LD in reading), showed great individual
variation in approaches to locating and extracting information from hypertext (Curcic,
2005). The students were selected as participants based on reports that they used
computers at home. All students used computers for Web searches at school. The primary
source of data was gathered through the observation of focal students on the task of
search for information to be used in writing a report on an animal (specifically, a
kangaroo). The Web sites uploaded on the school’s Web page varied in their readability,
navigability, overall design, and the number of hyperlinks included.

During their searches for information, general education students opened five
Web pages, while students with LD in reading opened one Web page only. In addition,
the general education students seemed to employ strategies that were more beneficial. For
example, they showed more attention to the text structure in both extracting information
and organizing their information for their reports. General education students copied
sentences, printed them out, and read over them. Then, they organized their texts into
paragraphs, adding their own comments. Students with LD in reading relied on copying

and pasting information from the screen, without an attempt to organize their texts or

59

 

insert their own comments. All six students varied greatly in the amount of information
they included in their writing (ranging from one to 13 paragraphs).

The three general education students exhibited shifts in main ideas in every
paragraph, as opposed to a list-like writing by some students with LD. Studies with
traditional texts reveal that text structures are considered important organizational
schemes underlying effective comprehension (Butcher & Kintsch, 2003; Englert &
Hiebert, 1984; Englert & Thomas, 1987; Meyer, 2003; Spivey, 1997; van den Broek,
1994). It also has been reported that students with LD seem to lack sensitivity to text
structures (e.g., Englert & Hiebert, 1984; Williams, 2003). The complex hypertext
environment, where text structures may shift abruptly, may create further gaps between
students with LD and general education students in tasks that require attention to the
selection and organization of information.

In spite of the availability of specific Web-based assignments, Gardner et al.
(2003) noted that for students “who are traditionally challenged in the areas of reading,
finding information on the Web can be both frustrating and overwhelming” and suggest
as one solution the “use of student-friendly search engines and online encyclopedias”,
such as: AskJeeves for Kids http://www.ajkids.com, Yahooligans
(http://www.yahooligans.com), leids (http://dknet.lineonenet/encyclopedia), and Fact
Monster (http://www.factmonster.com/encyclopedia.html) (p. 163). These authors also
recommend Web-Quests as a way of scaffolding instruction (http://edweb.sdsu.edu/
webquest/webquest.html). Web-Quests are Web-based environments with inquiry
projects in which students follow a sequence of steps. Gardner and Wissick (2005)

provide the description of elements and a number of URLs containing WebQuests (pp.

60

 

700-701). Some authors suggest that using the Web may offer an engaging environment
for learning. For example, students can participate in “inquiry-oriented activities” by
being directed to specific Web sites to complete assignments (Gardner & Wissick, 2005,
p. 698). Gardner and Wissick (2003) also suggest using online tools that may assist
teachers in designing inquiry and problem-based activities such as

http://www.ed.sc.edu/caw/toolboxcreateyourown.htrnl.

Studies with students in upper elementary grades with traditional texts show that
it is possible to improve students’ information literacy within the context of inquiry
projects (Dreher, Davis, Waynant, & Clewell, 1997). Dreher and colleagues conducted
research with fourth graders in two schools (13 in one school and 26 in the other) over
one year. The instruction was conducted within the context of social studies. Teachers
taught children the components of the research process, which proceeded from asking
questions to gathering information, organizing that information, and creating and revising
drafts of reports using the information. The process was presented as recursive rather than
linear. At both schools, students showed significant improvements in their search for
information, writing a response to research questions, and applying what they learned,
although one school had a larger number of poor readers than the other. The findings are

somewhat limited as there was no control group assigned.

Based on their findings, Dreher and colleagues stress that although research skills
instruction seems to be important for all students, it may be particularly important for
students with lower reading skills because these students may be less exposed to research

projects and not asked to write expository texts as often. Therefore, it seems that

61

 

particular attention Should be dedicated to students with LD in reading, with a focus on

instruction that would support their information processing and research skills.

In spite of the optimism surrounding technology use in classrooms, Boone and
Higgins (2005) warn that we should be aware of the distinction between access to
technology and access to learning. They suggest that adopting technology is both easy
and probably inevitable. However, they also note that research on the assessment of using
technology has not focused enough on its application in educational contexts.

Summary. The Web constitutes an educational environment that may be more
engaging than textbooks. For example, museum tours, history brought to life, the
possibility of examining primary sources, and the availability of simulated scientific
experiments may offer an interactive and engaging environment. There are a number of
Web sites that may allow teachers to scaffold and differentiate their instruction (e.g.,
Web-Quests). The review of studies of students with LD and Web engagement reveals
that research is very limited in this area. There are more suggestions of what teachers
could do with the Web than studies of how teachers and students use the Web and the
impact of that use. It seems that an urgent task before educators is to examine the ways in
which we can support struggling students’ online learning.

The K-12 education curriculum includes a number of literacy skills, including
information processing skills and research skills. Exploratory studies seem to indicate
that students with LD in reading could use instruction and support in developing these
skills or otherwise face further barriers in their education. Studies with students in upper

elementary school, including poor readers, show that it is possible to improve students’

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informational processing skills and that text search instruction may be particularly

important for students with lower reading skills.

Information Problem Solving and The Big6 Skills Model

Symons et al. (2001) note that students first encounter reading-to-do tasks, such as
information search, during the elementary years. Yet, we know little about the
developmental progression of students’ information problem solving skills. Symons and
colleagues (2001) also suggest that the problem solving tasks may be “particularly
amenable to instructional efforts” (p. 3). Based on the literature review, it was
hypothesized that the Big6 Skills might support students with LD in becoming strategic
in their information problem solving and “reading-to-do tasks”. Reading-to-do tasks and
information problem solving have been examined under the topics of “writing-from-
sources” or “discourse synthesis” (e.g., Nash, Schumacher, & Carlson, 1993; Spivey &
King, 1989). For example, Nash, Schumacher, and Carlson (1993) identify several
activities involved in such tasks. The writer is expected to: (1) choose a topic; (2) locate
and evaluate information; (3) select information from the sources; and (4) organize and
compose the essay. The steps are not necessarily followed in a linear fashion. Most of
these steps are incorporated into the model used in this study, the Big6 Skills, discussed
next. Several findings from “writing-from-sources” studies are discussed later in this

section.

The Big6 Skills model. There are various models of information problem solving
and the Big6 Skills is just one of them (e.g., Guthrie, 1988; Kuhlthau, 1997; Herring,
2006). The primary reason why this model has been chosen for this study is the fact that

it seems to incorporate important steps in information search (e.g., task definition,

63

information seeking strategies, location and access, use of information, synthesis, and
evaluation). The last step, evaluation, aims at developing metacognition, also an
important aspect of learning, especially for students with LD.

The Big6 Skills has been described as an approach to help students develop skills
and understanding of information problem solving (Eisenberg & Berkowitz, 1999). It
also is described as a process, which consists of six stages in the location and use of
information, although the process is not necessarily linear. Teaching students to break
down the components of complex tasks is instruction in strategic learning. Strategies are
processes matched to the requirements of tasks and learners, aimed at facilitating
performance (Pressley, Goodchild, Fleet, Zajchowski, & Evans, 1989, p. 303). Strategies
as processes are introduced within contexts. There are two main contexts for successfirl
Big6 Skills instruction: (1) real needs—either curricular or personal, and (2) the process
itself with two questions to consider in the process: “What’s the curriculum or personal
need” and “Where am I in the Big6 process?” (Eisenberg & Berkowitz, 1999, p. 33).

In their discussion of online information problem solving, Eisenberg and
Berkowitz (1999) suggest that we do not start instruction with the Web but rather with
the problem. Next, the students learn to identify sources given the situation presented on
the Web. To determine the best sources, the students engage in viewing/reading
information and explain their choices. The students learn to apply criteria (e. g.,
information selected is associated with and will help address the problem). The students
also learn to organize and synthesize their information. Finally, the students reflect on
their product (e. g., research report or essay) and processes involved in creating the

written product.

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After an introduction to the task, instruction in the Big6 Skills in the present study
begins with explanation and modeling (e.g., Pressley et al., 2006). The students are
oriented to the text structure of hypertext. To support the information processing skills of
seventh and eighth grade students with LD in reading, the treatment group was instructed
in the Big6 Skills and provided with two graphics: a chart listing the Big6 Skills and an
essay map organizer. The control group was instructed to use the essay map organizer
also.

The new literacies framework (e.g., Coiro et al., 2008) proposes additional skills
to be deveIOped, such as critical evaluation of the sources on the Web. In many schools,
the Web pages are loaded on the schools’ Web sites and students are not necessarily
instructed to question these sources. At the same time, many schools do engage in
instructing the students how to evaluate various Web sites. Because of the complexity
involved in teaching students information problem solving as opposed to evaluating the
Web sites, students are often instructed separately in understanding these two processes.

Writing from multiple sources. In this study, the students engaged in
information problem solving for the purposes of writing reports for a Social Studies and
Science Fair. The students’ traditional searches for information related to academic
writing had been conducted predominantly within specific textbooks, books, and
magazines. Online reading and learning underscore the need for developing competencies
that combine reading and writing as connected. As Gambrell and Koskinen (2002) note,
writing “is the process of selecting, combining, arranging, and developing ideas, and it

[composition] is therefore a reflection of comprehension” (p. 307).

65

As children progress in their schooling toward the upper grades, they are
increasingly expected to read, write, and comprehend various expository texts such as
material about science, social studies, geography, and other disciplines (Wilson &
Rupley, 1997). Also, as children progress from grade to grade, written language demands
advance from informal to more formal writing (Calfee & Wilson, 2004). Many students
find it challenging to create formal texts. In particular, the knowledge of students with
LD about writing (e.g., genre, devices, mechanics) tends to be limited (Graham & Harris,
2003).

Writing based on multiple sources might complicate the process of composing
even further. For example, Raphael and Boyd (1991) reported on two studies with late
elementary students with a particular focus on the way these students synthesized
information from multiple sources of nonfiction articles. Using a naturalistic design, they
observed various inhibiting strategies employed by the children, who: (1) used
associative memory or recall (ideas are linked to one another but without an overarching
organization); (2) showed insensitivity to audience; (3) digressed from the topics because
they overemphasized a reliance on background knowledge; (4) copied verbatim
(strategically or randomly); (5) narrowly identified relevant information; and, (6)
engaged in writing a story as opposed to an expository text. The students’ own purpose
for writing did not necessarily match those of the teachers. The authors concluded from
follow-up interviews that children were not necessarily lacking strategies, but brought
their own impressions to the task and thus corrupted the assignment. For example, some
students thought that when people write reports they do so to express what interests them

personally rather than what would interest other people. Also, some students appeared to

66

assume that their audience is the adult who gave the assignment and therefore provided
very little context for a reader. It seems clear from these studies that students should write
for an audience other than their teacher.

Kirkpatrick and Klein (2009) noted that writing from sources is an important
determinant for school success, yet an under-researched topic. They suggest that one of
the most important aspects of any written text is its structure. In a pretest-posttest quasi-
experimental control group design, they instructed 83 seventh and eighth graders to write
from sources, with a particular focus on planning and compare-contrast text structure.
Both the control and experimental group had a few students with disabilities. The
instructional unit consisted of six lessons, lasting approximately six hours. The writing
instruction unit had a greater impact on students with low writing ability than on the
students with high writing ability. This occurred in both conditions and there was no
interaction between condition and students’ writing ability on gain scores. However, an
AN OVA showed a main effect of condition for holistic grade—the students in the writing
condition had greater holistic grade gain scores than the students in the control condition.
The authors concluded that given the poor performance at pretest and large gains at
posttest in compare-contrast writing, the instruction in genre-appropriate text structure
might be especially important. They also noted the difficulty of the task of writing from
sources. Students must decontextualize information from the goal of the original
author(s) and recontextualize information to meet their own goals as writers.

Spivey and King (1989) reported that reading ability was related to students’
writing from multiple sources. Proficient readers in their study included more content in

their writing reports, were better at synthesizing information, and also were better at

67

organizing their texts. Spivey and King repeated research conducted with college students
with sixth-, eighth-, and tenth-grade students. They showed that older students included
significantly more content in their reports than younger students. However, a planned
ANOVA that compared the students by grade and reading ability found a main effect for
reading ability, but not for grade. The authors concluded that the ability of the students to
organize the content for their writing was an important link between reading ability and
writing ability. In studies in which the students were not encouraged to present their own
ideas, the participants tended to rely more on information from the sources in writing
their reports. They also noted that when tasks are ill defined, greater variability in
processes and products is to be expected. Spivey and King, therefore, argue that research
into literacy must not attend only to cognitive factors, but also to task factors.
Metacognition and strategy instruction. Metacognition has received a great
deal of research attention, but less research is related to the metacognition of children’s
information problem solving. Palincsar (1986) defines metacognition as the ability to
plan, implement, and evaluate strategic approaches to learning. Brown (1987) suggests
that a positive outcome of researchers’ interest in metacognition is attempts to understand
development in learning situations through interactive intervention studies: as the child
adopts more of the skills initially undertaken by the adult and gradually learns how to
learn, the adult relinquishes control. Wood, Wood, and Middleton (1978) and Stone
(1998) refer to this form of adult assistance as scaffolding. Wood and colleagues
emphasize that the end product is not the only goal. They stress that it is also important
that a child becomes cognizant of what was involved in the successfirl completion of the

task.

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Metacognition is critical to effective strategy use. Cognitively oriented research
on writing has underscored the active role of the writer who engages in the complex
recursive and iterative processes of writing, such as planning, drafting, and revising. The
complexity of the writing process, as well as its metacognitive dimensions, has led to
research on writing self-regulation and strategy instruction (e.g., Englert, Raphael,
Anderson, Anthony, & Stevens, 1991; Graham & Harris, 1989; Pressley, Schuder,
Bergman, & El-Dinary, 1992; Troia & Graham, 2002). Without adequate metacognitive
awareness and self-monitoring strategies, students with LD experience serious deficits in
written language (Englert et al., 1991; Wong, 2000). Instructional design and
individualized support therefore need to take into account the literacy challenges of
students with LD.

A long line of research with students with LD reveals that these students benefit
from strategic approaches to literacy and development of metacognitive knowledge and
actions (e.g., Englert, Raphael, Anderson, Anthony, & Stevens, 1991; Englert & Mariage;
1991; Gersten, Fuchs, Williams, & Baker, 2001; Graham, Harris, & Troia, 2000;
Pressley, Johnson, Symons, McGoldrick, & Kurita, 1989; Troia & Graham, 2002). For
example, Graham and his colleagues conducted a number of investigations intended to
use strategies to improve students’ writing, especially students with LD. The teacher
models and discusses strategies with the students. The instruction leads to self-regulated
writing, in which students are taught to monitor and evaluate their performance. Englert
and her colleagues (e.g. Englert et al., 1991) also employed strategy instruction to
improve writing of students with LD. Students were asked to follow a set of questions

that cue the students toward the purpose and the audience in planning for their writing.

69

One of the expected outcomes of the study reported here was that students would adopt a
strategic and metacognitive approach to the search, location, selection, and organization
of information through instruction in the Big6 Skills approach to information problem
solving, and that this change in their approach would be reflected in their written
products.

Scaffolding. In their work on parent-child interactions, Wood, Bruner and Ross
(1976) introduced the scaffolding metaphor. They noted that “. . .scaffolding consists
essentially of the adult ‘controlling’ those elements of the task that are initially beyond
the learner’s capacity, thus permitting him to concentrate upon and completing only those
elements that are within his range of competence” (p. 90). The types of assistance that an
adult might provide could be: (1) recruitment (engaging student interest); (2) reduction of
degrees of freedom (constraining the task); (3) direction maintenance (supporting goal-
directedness and risk-taking); (4) marking critical features (highlighting discrepancies
between progress and goal); (5) frustration control (mediating fi'ustration and
independence); and, (6) demonstration (modeling solutions) (Wood et al., 1976, p. 98).

Stone (1998) describes several critical features of scaffolding. First, a child is
recruited by an adult to be involved in a meaningful and desirable activity beyond the
child’s current understanding or control. Second, the adult monitors the child’s skill level
or understanding and adjusts the support. The supports might vary from nonverbal
assistance (modeling or pointing) to extensive dialogues. Finally, the support provided by
the adult is gradually withdrawn and the child assumes the responsibility for the task

completion.

70

Scaffolding through extensive dialogues has been employed in reciprocal teaching
work (Palincsar & Brown, 1984). In reciprocal teaching, the students and adults take
turns in the role of a teacher and in leading the group toward understanding a selected
paragraph of the text. The teacher for a certain paragraph asks a question about it,
summarizes it, asks for clarifications, etc. Likewise, a collaborative and dialogic
scaffolded approach is used in the instruction of students taught the POSSE (Predict,
Organize, Search, Summarize, and Evaluate) strategy (Englert, Tarrant, Mariage, & Oxer,
1994). Students are taught through graduated questioning and procedural facilitation
through the use of cue cards with specific strategies. These instructional studies based on
the scaffolding metaphor obtained large effects.

Motivation. Another important consideration in instruction, especially for
students with LD, is related to motivation. Troia, Shankland, and Wolbers (in press) state
that self-efficacy beliefs, goal orientation, interest in task, and attributions for success and
failure, all contribute to motivation. In this view, motivation is not simply present or
absent but rather is a multidimensional component in academic domains. In the domain
of writing, Troia et al. (in press) point out that, in spite of the fact that writing may be a
valued social practice, its “relevance, importance, and benefits” may not be obvious to
students (p. 20). It seems that although an important dimension in all human activities,
motivation remains under-researched in academic tasks assigned to students in K-12
schooling contexts.

In the domain of reading, interest and positive affect toward reading have been
associated with higher cognitive effort and comprehension of texts (Guthrie, Hoa,

Wigfield, Tonks, Hymenick, & Littles, 2007). Guthrie and colleagues found that students

71

in later elementary grades did not have a well-developed sense of general efficacy but
had a strong sense of situational efficacy (e. g., linked to a particular book rather than a
general sense of being a good reader). In addition to self-efficacy, there were associations
among interest, perceived control, involvement, and collaboration. The students’ interest
was correlated with their cognitive engagement, based on analysis of coded self-reports.
The students highly valued when they could choose their own books to read (perceived
control) and had a positive affect for collaboration.

Hidi and Harackiewicz (2000) stress the importance of distinguishing between
individual interest and situational interest. They suggest that individual interest may help
students sustain their attention for a topic in spite of a boring presentation, while
situational interest may enhance student motivation because of the way particular texts
are presented. In this study, students will be presented with a Likert motivational scale
related to a specific topic before they are presented with the Web-based learning task. It
is assumed that the scale will measure individual interest rather than situational interest,
although it also seems that‘in practice these two concepts (individual and situational

interest) are not necessarily easy to separate.

72

CHAPTER3

METHOD

The purpose of this chapter is to describe the methods and procedures of the
study. First, the characteristics of the participants and the setting are described. Second,
the experimental procedures and assignment of participants to conditions are described,
and finally, the adnrinistration of the intervention is described.

An experimental pretest-posttest control group design was used to examine the
effects of intervention in text search and information management. Specifically, this
design involved two groups of seventh and eighth grade students with reading difficulties
who were matched on several variables that were controlled (i.e., verbal and perceptual
abilities, Internet skills, reading comprehension) and randomly assigned to the treatment
and control groups. This design is a variant of a repeated measure design, also termed a
“matched sample design” (Howell, 2002). In addition, qualitative data were gathered
through a semi-structured interview to examine students metacognition related to the
intervention.

Participants

Twenty students with LD and learning difficulties in grades seven and eight in a
Midwestem K-12 non-public school participated in this study. Both the treatment (n=10)
and control group (n=10) had an equal number of seventh (n=5) and eighth graders (n=5)
in each group. The students were included if they met the following stepwise criteria:

(1) the student is identified by the school as a student with LD;
(2) the student has a normal verbal IQ (85 or greater);

(3) the student has no sensory or motor deficits or social/emotional disorder; and

73

(4) English is the student’s first language.

Upon obtaining IRB approval, letters were sent home to 37 seventh and eighth
graders through the school mail. Twenty-five parents responded positively (68% response
rate). Once the consent letters were obtained, I followed up with recruiting participants
individually and those who agreed to participate signed an assent form. For the purposes
of the final analyses, not all of these students were included for the following reasons: (a)
one student was diagnosed with emotional-behavioral disorder (EBD) and did not meet
the stepwise criteria; (b) one student had a below average verbal IQ score and also did not
meet the other inclusion criteria; (c) one student participated only sporadically because,
as he explained, he “hated reading, writing, and computers”; (d) one student had autism,
and (e) one had Asperger’s syndrome. Three students who had below 85 IQ (in the range
of 73 to 77) were included in the study. Two of these students were in the treatment
group.

The demographic characteristics of the participants are displayed in Table 1. Table
1 also includes the scores for the key measures used to match students before random
assignment to condition. These include: (a) an averaged standard score for verbal IQ
(VIQ) and verbal comprehension index (VCI) from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for
Children-IV (WISC-IV); (b) an averaged standard score for perceptual IQ (PIQ) and
perceptual reasoning index (PRI) from the WISC-IV; (c) a standard score for reading
comprehension from the Passage Comprehension (PC) subtest Of the Woodcock-
Johnson-III Tests of Achievement (WJ-III); and (d) a total raw score from a modified

version of the Teaching Internet Comprehension Skills to Adolescents (TICA) checklist

74

TICA (Leu, Reinking, Carter, Castek, Coiro, Henry, et al., 2007). The TICA modified

version was used because the specific Web sites to be researched were preselected.

Table 1. Demographics and Matching Variable Performance of Student Participants

 

 

Variable Treatment Control
n=10 Mean (SD) n=10 Mean (SD)

Age

13 5 5

14 5 5
Gender

Male 6 4

Female 4 6
Ethnicity

African American 1

Asian 1

Caucasian 8 8

Hispanic 1 l
VIQ/VCI Average 91.50 (11.47) 97.10 (14.36)
PIQ/PRI Average 92.30 (15.60) 101.40 (21.78)

Passage Comprehension 82.90 (6.05)

TICA

19.30 (1.25)

85.10 (8.71)

19.80 (0.42)

 

75

Setting

The selected school for this study was a K-12 non-public Midwestern school. This
school was selected because it enrolls students with LD. Recently, the school had
expanded enrollment to include students with emotional disorders and other impairments
(e.g., autism). The students came from 50 school districts throughout the greater
metropolitan area and varied from low (approximately one third of the student
population) to high SES (also approximately one-third of the students with some of them
directly enrolled by their parents, without going through school district referrals).

The research was conducted in the computer lab of the school. The computer lab
had about 20 Macintosh desktop computers. I conducted sessions predominantly with
individual students, although four small group sessions were also scheduled during the
midpoint of the project with both the treatment and control students. In the computer lab,
there were occasional sessions during which other children not involved with the study
worked individually with speech-language pathologists.

All students shared the same computer lab teacher and the same library teacher.
The students were instructed in cohorts so that seventh and eighth graders attended the
classes together. The teachers followed the same curriculum, which was highly scripted
(according to the teachers and, also, according to observations), especially for language
arts and math.

Data Collection and Analyses

Data collection Multiple sources of data were collected. First, during December

2008 through mid-March 2009, I observed once a week for two to three hours in

language arts, social studies, science, library, and computer lab classes. Observations

76

were recorded in the form of field notes. Second, I collected data relevant to the matching
variables based on norm-referenced tests fi'om students’ files. Third, I administered
surveys and questionnaires (TICA checklist, prior knowledge questionnaires, and
motivation scales). Fourth, I recorded the number of links that the students opened during
their Web searches for their research papers. Also, students’ writing artifacts were
collected for further analyses. Lastly, the treatment students responded to a semi-
structured questionnaire at two points during this study to share the perceived benefits of
working with the Big6 Skills steps.

Data analyses. To answer the research questions, the quantitative analyses took
into account offline reading ability and intelligence (Passage Comprehension subtest
scores and averaged scores for VIQ/VCI and PIQ/PRI, respectively) and online
performance (the TICA checklist). Further analysis took into account prior knowledge
and topic-specific motivation. Product measures (scores on a writing quality rubric and
text length) and the navigation measure (number of hyperlinks accessed) were also taken
into account during analyses. The rationale for these measures was as follows:

(a) Prior topic knowledge (pm-intervention, intervention, and post-intervention phase).
The prior topic knowledge was measured before each topic was introduced using a brief
questionnaire consisting of five true-false items. Research shows that prior domain
knowledge may influence online reading comprehension although the findings also Show
some mixed results (Coiro, 2007; Tolhurst & Debus, 2002). The measure was scored as
correct versus incorrect, with the maximum score of 5. The questionnaire can be found in

Appendix K.

77

(b) Motivation (pm-intervention, intervention, post-intervention): A Likert-type
motivational scale (see Appendix H) was administered before students engaged in search
for information and therefore is assumed to reflect the student’s interest in the topic rather
than the potential of texts to contribute to motivation. Motivation is related to students’
engagement in a task and therefore an important consideration in instruction (Troia et al.,
in press).

(c) Product measures (pre-intervention, post-intervention). The quality of the products
(expository texts for the Fair posters) written during pre- and post-intervention sessions
was measured using the RAFT writing rubric (Figure 2), which evaluates writing quality
using a 4-point scale on four dimensions: topic, organization, sentence structure, and
mechanics of language. This rubric was used to assign a summative score across traits,
with the total possible points of 16. Text length was measured by word count.

(d) Text length (pm-intervention, post-intervention). The length of the written products
was measured by word count.

(e) Navigation (pm-intervention, post-intervention). The number of links opened was
counted for most topics researched on the Web. The literature review reveals that
navigation, including the number of links opened, influences successful access to and use
of information on the Web (e.g., Salmerdn, et al., 2005).

(f) Semi-structured questionnaire. The purpose of the semi-structured questionnaire was
to gather data on the students’ perceptions of usefulness of the Big6 Skills approach to
information problem solving. The interviews were asked at midpoint and at the end of the
study. Some students were able to consider their actions and describe them, revealing

their metacognitive awareness of their learning, although the descriptions were somewhat

78

imperfect (Brown, 1987). Some reports were also somewhat limited (i.e., without much

elaboration).

Figure 2: RAFT Rubric

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Category 4 3 2 1

Topic There is one Main idea is Main idea is The main
clear, well- clear but the somewhat clear idea is not
focused topic. supporting but there is a clear. There
Main idea information is need for more is a
stands out and general. supporting seemingly
is supported by information. random
detailed collection of
information. information.

Organization Details are Details are Some details are Many details
placed in placed in not in a logical are not in
logical order logical order, or expected logical or
and the way but the way in order and that expected
they are which they are distracts the order. There
presented presented/introd reader. is little sense
effectively uced sometimes that the
keeps the makes the writing is
interest of the writing less organized.
reader. interestinL

Sentence All sentences Most sentences Most sentences Sentences

length and are well- are well- are well- lack variety

variety constructed constructed constructed and appear
with varied with varied but have a incomplete.
structure. structure. similar structure.

CUPS Writer makes Writer makes 1- Writer makes 3- Writer makes
no errors in 2 errors in 4 errors in than 4 errors
grammar, grammar, grammar, in grammar,
spelling, spelling, spelling, spelling,
capitalization capitalization or capitalization or capitalization
or punctuation punctuation that punctuation that or
that distract the distract the distract the punctuation
reader from the reader from the reader from the that distract
content. content. content. the readers

fi'om the
content.
Source: Copyright. © 2000-2008, ALTEC at University of Kansas

79

 

Pilot study. Preliminary data were collected through informal observations of one
student. The Big6 Skills has two versions for younger readers. The pilot was useful in
making a decision to implement the simpler version of the Big6 Skills handout—
summarized on one page, rather than two. The student’s task in the pilot study was to
write a report about electricity and conductors rather than make a poster. The steps of the
Big6 Skills were taught holistically. The student work clearly showed progress over four
sessions from writing two sentences to writing two paragraphs and moving away from
relying strictly on copying and pasting.

The pilot study indicated that close attention should be paid to the following
factors: (a) the task should be well determined so that students stay focused on a
particular topic or inquiry; (b) students must understand the firnction of the links on the
screen; (c) the teacher should help students connect previous knowledge with information
presented on the screen; (d) students must understand the vocabulary used in the Big6
Skills and also on the Web sites; and (e) students should use a spell checker and
dictionary/thesaurus. Lesson plans reflect these points (Appendices E and F).

General Procedures

Assignment to conditions. In this study, treatment refers to the intervention
through instruction in the Big6 Skills information problem solving model. A visual
organizer in the form of an essay map was also utilized. The control group engaged in the
same tasks, without instruction in the Big6 Skills. The control group was instructed in
using the same essay map visual organizer.

All students were assessed using the WISC-IV and the WJ-III test by the school

psychologist. The WISC-IV is an individually administered clinical instrument for

80

assessing the cognitive ability of children aged 6 years though 16 years and 11 months.
For the purposes of this study, two averaged scores were used from WISC-IV as the basis
for matching the students prior to assignment to conditions: VIQ and VCI averaged
scores and PIQ and PRI averaged scores. VIQ is based on the Information, Similarities,
Arithmetic, Vocabulary, and Comprehension subtests. VCI requires verbal
conceptualization, stored knowledge access, and oral expression and is based on
Similarities, Vocabulary, Comprehension, Information, and Word Reasoning subtests.
PIQ is based on the Picture Completion, Coding, Picture Arrangement, and Block Design
subtests. PR1 requires visual perception, organization, and reasoning with visually
presented nonverbal material to solve problems that are not typically used in schools and
is based on the Block Design, Picture Concepts, Matrix Reasoning, and Picture
Completion subtests. Thus, the average of these derived scores represents the most
complete and comprehensive estimation of the students’ overall intellectual functioning.
The WJ-III is a test designed to measure academic achievement in most school
subjects. The score on the Passage Comprehension subtest of the WJ-III test was used as
one of the matching variables. Students are asked to complete missing information in
sentences and passages. The examination of student participants’ files revealed students
had LD in reading, but also that two students might have had additional difficulties due to
ADHD and three students had a score lower than 85 in VIQ or PIQ. The students also
were matched on the scores from a checklist for the evaluation of Internet skills based on
a slightly modified version of the TICA, developed by Leu, Reinking, Carter, Castek,
Coiro, and Henry et al. (2007) and presented in Appendix B. The complete instrument

includes e-mail basic skills, which were not central to this project, and skills involved in

81

using keywords and search engines, which were not included on the modified version
because the students used predetermined and loaded Web sites. Before the intervention, I
observed that all students knew how to use search engines (predominantly Google) and
how to perform searches. The final assignment to conditions was completed after the pre-
intervention during which I assessed students’ Internet skills, using the TICA checklist
(Appendix B).

Context for information search. In collaboration with teachers, the context for
information search was established as a task of creating Science and Social Studies Fair
posters. Teachers identified a poster as a form that would be most suitable as a
framework for science and social studies inquires. It also was decided that a poster allows
more room for expression than writing strictly expository text, which might be more
constraining for students with LD in reading who also often exhibit difficulties in writing.

The purpose of students’ creating the poster was to inform the fourth graders at
the school about social studies and science content they would be learning in subsequent
grades. The reasoning behind this task was two-fold: (a) first, students were provided
with an authentic audience for their Web inquires (Purcell-Gates, Duke, & Martineau,
2007); and, (b) students were asked to create a poster for younger students which
required them to go beyond copying and pasting to express information in their own
words so that younger children might understand the content (a point shared with the
students during instruction in the task). The posters themselves were not used as data
sources for this project, but simply provided the context for the writing students did.

Task instruction All participants were instructed to access information through a

Web portal and select information they deemed relevant to share with their younger

82

counterparts. I instructed students individually in the task delineated in Figure 3 (see
Appendix A for the full version of the instructional procedures).

Figure 3: Basic task instruction.

 

Task sample (pm-intervention):

(a) Your task is to write a piece for the Science and Social
Studies Fair to be shared with fourth graders here at your
school.

(b) Click on the page “Weather”. Explore the links to find
information about rain, thunderstorms, and lightening.

(0) Open a Word document and take notes. Note some
important ideas and some details. You may also include
some images, if you wish.

(d) Copy the URL (the Web address) where you found
information for references at the end.

 

 

 

Reports for the posters were limited to one or two pages, although the pieces
could be shorter. The length of writing was deliberately not strictly prescribed so that
students were not preoccupied with the quantity of their work. The students’ written
pieces were saved and printed out for further analysis.

During my observations, I learned that the participants in the study were engaged
in separate research projects that took place over several months. Students were assigned
a task (e.g., choose one South American country of interest), conducted research in the
library and record findings on a worksheet that helped structure their writing (e.g.,
geography of a country in South America, including location and surroundings,
latitude/longitude, area, and capital, were to be recorded and used for a first paragraph
under that topic in a report; major topographical features such as rivers, deserts, and
mountains, and animals and vegetation found in the country, were to be recorded and

used in the second paragraph under that topic; characteristics of the population, including

83

ethnic groups, religions, and languages, were to be recorded and used for a first
paragraph under that topic for the report; and culture/maj or festivals and foods were to be
recorded and used in the second paragraph under that topic). Then, the students would
search for some Google images (e.g. the flag of a country) in the computer lab. Finally,
the students would type up their reports in the computer lab based on their completed
worksheets. At the end of the school year, the students had a presentation and a food feast
celebration based on the selected countries. This study imposed a task of covering more
topics in a shorter period of time, which made the task more challenging.

Web portal For the purposes of information search, the Web portal (Figure 4)
was created within a Google account. The selected Web pages were uploaded on the Page
Creator. The topics relate to social science (e.g., three branches of the government,

Constitution, etc.) and science (e.g., electricity, electrical safety, conductors, etc.).

Figure 4. Screenshot of the Web portal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

84

The topics were chosen based on consultation with teachers and examination of
curricular materials provided by the teachers (e. g., the textbook for social studies and
modules used for science). Each topic links to three Web sites on one page. When the
screen opens, it displays a topic and the links to the Web sites (Figure 5). Clicking on a
hyperlink leads to the associated Web pages.

Figure 5. Screenshot of Electricity and safety Web hyperlinks.

E l estri Ci tr, Lang “s, a f. at y

 

 

 

http:1lwww.epcor.ca [elec safety wgrlg (hurtltraveLthrouqh.html

httpzllwwwepconca [eleg safe ty‘worldisafemhoicejindex.hrml

httpruwwwepcorxaleleCJafew_world15cie rice/prod ucinq.html

 

Opening the first link displays the text, images, and hyperlinks associated with the
first topic in “Electricity and safety—Electricity can hurt and travel through you” (see the
related Web site: Culverco.com, LLC at
http://www.epcor.ca/elec_safety_world/hurt/travel_through.html)

The Web sites varied in their design, navigability and readability. Taking into
account the averaged readability scores per Web page, the Flesch-Kincaid readability
level in this study varied from the lowest score of 5.2 to the highest score of 10.9 (M=
8.19, SD=1.70).

Pre-intervention. During the first session, the task was the same for all
students—to create a poster for the Social Studies and Science Fair for the fourth graders.

Students were instructed to find information on the Web portal. The task was to identify

85

important information and write a report with at least three main ideas and three details
for each main idea. The same script and protocol were followed for all students in pre-
intervention (Appendix A: Lesson plan #1). During pre-intervention students explored
one topic that was not a part of their current curriculum—the information search was on
the topic of weather (rain, lightening and thunderstorms) and the topic of weather was
also used in post-intervention (tornadoes).

As students worked on their task during the pre-intervention session, I evaluated
their skills on the modified TTCA Checklist. Most of the students could perform all the
skills presented on the TICA. After the scores were obtained from the pre-intervention
session, the students were matched and randomly assigned to the intervention or control
group. The first pre-intervention topic was not a part of the curriculum but rather a topic
that all students knew something about—weather. The “Weather” page had three links:
“Rain”, “Thunderstorms” and “Lightening”. The posttest was also related to weather
(“Tornadoes”) because it became obvious that some students were learning about the
US. Constitution, while some learned about WWII, and keeping the content the same at
both time points ensured varied content coverage in the classroom would not become a
confound. To account for the students’ prior topic knowledge, I asked students before
their Web searches five true-false questions. Also, a motivation scale was administered
before each task (see Appendix H). The questions asked that students rate their interest in
learning about the specific topic, researching about it, and writing a report for the fourth
graders about it.

The same procedure was followed throughout all the sessions. First, I assessed

prior knowledge orally, but also presented the true-false questions in print form on the

86

screen. Second, I administered a motivational scale orally but also provided a hard copy,
read the questions, and recorded the students’ answers. Third, we proceeded to research
using the Web pages. Each session lasted approximately 40-50 minutes, the duration of
one period, whether the students completed their task or not. If the task was not
completed, their work was saved, and the students continued to work on their topic in the
next session. The summary of all the topics and the Web sites for all the sessions is
presented in Appendix I.

Intervention. During the second session, I instructed individually 10 treatment
students in the Big6 Skills approach to information search and management through
modeling and direct instruction (Appendix D; Appendices F and G: Lesson plans #2 and
#3). Research indicates that students with reading difficulties benefit from explicit
instruction (e.g., Duffy, Roehler, Sivan, Rackliffe, Book, Meloth et al., 1987). I modeled
the search for main ideas and details with the Big6 Skills using the same topic as in pre-
intervention and the same Web page and links. Modeling and guiding instruction
followed the steps in the Big6 Skills captured in Figure 6.

Figure 6. Steps in the Big6 Skills

 

 

Basic Steps in the Big6 Skills
Step 1: Task definition.
Define a task: What needs to be done?

Step 2: Information seeking strategies: What resources can I use?

(a) Skimming: Open the first link to the Web page. Scroll down the page to see what
information is available.

(b) Scanning: Scan the information available.

(c) Open additional links. Scan the information available.

Step 3: Location and Access: Where can I find the resources?
(a) Go back to the first link.

 

87

 

 

(b) Read the first sentence of the first paragraph.

(c) Consider the importance and relevance for the topic.
((1) Scan other paragraphs.

(e) Consider the text, but also images, if any.

Step 4: Use of Information: What can I use from these resources?

(a) Look at the essay map (Handout 2).

(b) Consider some main ideas and some details relevant to your topic.

(0) Take notes. Do you understand all the words; if not, break the words down, re-read,
look at the context, check the dictionary under the Tools.

((1) Copy URLs (Web addresses) for your references and paste them at the bottom of your

page.

Step 5: Synthesis: What can I make to finish the job?

(a) Consider whether you have an introduction to the topic.

(b) Consider whether you have at least three main ideas and three details that further
explain these ideas.

(c) Add a conclusion to your piece.

((1) Read over your poster piece and seek the words that you don’t understand or that you
think would be too hard for second graders to understand. Rephrase sentences so that you
retell the piece in you own words.

(e) Think about whether there is anything else you would like to add or learn.

Step 6: Evaluation: How will I know I did my job well?

How did you do in your search for information? Which strategies seemed to be usefirl?
How did you do with writing the poster piece? How would you evaluate your poster
piece?

 

Source: Based on The Big6 Skills Curriculum adopted fi'om The "Big6TM" - Copyright ©
(1987) Michael B. Eisenberg and Robert E. Berkowitz

In researching the second topic, ”Three branches of the US. government”, the
treatment students were expected to look at Handout 1 (the Big6 Skills —Appendix C) and
Handout 2 (essay map — Appendix E). I guided the students in the process as necessary.
The students were reminded to (a) state the task, (b) use strategies to seek for information
(e.g., open the links, skim and scan the information); (d) look for some main ideas and
details; and (e) take notes in a Word document. Some students completed their task in

one session and some students completed their task in two sessions. I monitored students’

88

 

performance with corrective feedback (Armbruster, Anderson, & Ostertag, 1987). More
elaborated versions of the instruction in the Big6 Skills are in Appendices F and G.

The control group students were provided with the essay map handout and I
instructed them on how to use the handout to facilitate their research and writing. The
control group was asked to complete the same task without any instruction in the Big6
Skills steps. My involvement with the control group students was going to be limited to
answering student questions, if any. However, the students asked a lot of questions
because they were not sure how to approach the task and I, consequently, became very
much involved in instructing the control group students as well. The students did not use
the visual organizer independently and I had to prompt them to review whether they had
an introduction, some mains ideas, and conclusion. One student regularly noted that
“This is good for the fourth graders”, implying that they do not need long reports.

The students in the treatment group who did not complete their task in the second
session were asked to complete the task during the next session (mostly steps 5 and 6 of
the Big6 Skills). Those students who did not complete their report in one period were
instructed to look over their notes and consider ways to synthesize and organize them.
The completion of the task and the time necessary to complete it sometimes varied
depending on the school’s schedule. For example, students would not hurry to the
computer lab if they had previously played basketball.

When students had a tendency to copy and paste, I reminded them of the
importance of stating the text in their own words and to remember that they were writing
for fourth graders. This seemed to be a good approach and most of the students engaged

in rereading and revising what they wrote.

89

Handout 2 (Appendix E: the essay map) served as a visual organizer to consider
the text structure. The students were asked to review their report structure and to
consider: (a) Do you have an introduction to your piece? How will you inform your
audience (fourth graders) what is your text going to be about?; (b) What are the main
ideas?; Is there anything that needs to be explained into more details?; (c) In the end, do
you have a summary statement/conclusion? Are there any important points that you
would like your peers to remember? ; ((1) Do you think that younger students will
understand all the words? Does anything need to be clarified? One of the questions I
originally anticipated that I would ask at the end was: (e) Do you have the references at
the end of your report? However, it seemed that dealing with references would take much
more time than anticipated and I decided not engage in instruction related to the
references.

During the third session, those treatment students who completed their second
topic in the second session, moved on to the topic of “Electricity”. The control group was
asked to complete the same task without any modeling of the search steps but was
reminded to use the essay map. As noted, the students needed a lot of guidance in
completing the task using the essay map. The idea of the “main idea” seemed to be
particularly difficult to distinguish from details in informational texts.

The fourth topic to be explored was “Constitution”. The treatment group was
guided to look at Handout 1 (the Big6 Skills) and Handout 2 (the essay map). I first asked
the question: Do you remember what the task is? What needs to be done first? Depending
on the student answer, I encouraged the student to proceed or provided guidance as in the .

third session: (a) consider the task; (b) strategies to seek for information (e. g., open the

90

links, skim and scan the information); (c) look for some main ideas and details; (d) take
notes in a Word document; (e) follow the steps in the Big6 Skills.

The control group was asked to complete their tasks individually, and initially,
without any guided instruction. However, most of the students had questions such as:
What shall I do? Where do I start?, etc. The students were not used to conducting
research independently, whether in the library or in the computer lab, and I concluded
that instruction is of paramount importance for these students as well, and guided them as
necessary.

During the fifih session, the treatment group was expected to complete the task
going through the steps of the Big6 Skills, guided as needed in the steps to be completed.
The control group was to complete their task with guided instruction using the essay map
alone. The topic was “Electrical safety”. This was one of the most popular sites as noted
in my field notes. Some of the reasons might be: (1) the first link at
http://www.epcor.ca/e1ec_safety_worldfhurt/travel_through.htrnl had some general points
about electrical safety. The second link at
http://www.safeelectricity.org/esw_v1_1/safe_choice/index.htrnl offered a game “Safe
Choices” to play which had questions related to some everyday problems: a proper way
to get toast out of your toaster, when/why to plug in or unplug things, playing music in a
bathtub, and other questions about electrical hazards. The third link offered advice on
how to avoid electric shock, which many students considered including in their reports
because they thought it was important to inform the fourth graders about how to avoid a
shock. While most of the students learned to open the three links provided originally,

some students explored up to 16 links and hyperlinks within the site. The site seemed

91

appealing to both treatment and control students. During the sixth session, the students
were presented with another topic fiom social studies, “Presidents”, with the treatment
group being guided as needed, and the control group performing the task independently,
with minimal prompts.

During the seventh through twelfth sessions, guided instruction continued with
fading prompts. The control group performed the tasks also with fading prompts. Most
students had to be reminded to consider the steps to follow in the Big6 Skills, and some
had to be reminded of their audience (check whether the text is written so that the fourth
graders may understand it), to use strategies for understanding the vocabulary, etc. Most
of the students had to be reminded to look at the structure of their text (introduction, main
ideas, details, and conclusion). Some students did not manage to complete all 13 topics,
which is why the final analysis took into account the reports completed on 11 topics by
all students.

Post-Intervention. Groups performed the task individually and independently as
at pretest on the topic of weather (Tornadoes). After the last session, the students were
asked to choose one or two poster pieces for the Fair poster presentations.

Scoring Reliability

An inter-rater reliability was established for 70% of the sample of written reports.
A colleague, blind to the conditions, was provided with the writing rubric. The interrater
reliability for pretest was 98% and for posttest was 94% on the measure of writing
quality.

Procedural Reliability

92

Introducing a camera at the beginning of the project seemed intrusive because the
computer lab also served as office space for one teacher and one speech-language
pathologist. Based on several initial students’ reaction to the camera, it also seemed that
the students would perceive our sessions as some sort of testing. After I developed a good
working relationship with the computer lab teacher and the students, I videotaped two
small group sessions. One of these sessions reveals that the students had different needs
during the instruction. For example, when asked: “Do you remember what the task is?”,
one student (control group) responded “No”, while another student (treatment) explained:
“It is to research the topic you have been asked to do and this is for fourth graders at
[name of the school]. They want us to get really good information so we can use it with
fourth graders.” Also, the first student is heard saying: “This is no fun. I want to do
something else.” The students also responded differently to the question: What is our
task? One student said, “Open the Word”, while another responded, “First, we introduce
the topic. Then, do research. Open three links. Third, search what’s important, and add it
right here”, and pointed at his notes on the screen. The camera captured the work of the
second student who copied and pasted some words (e.g., electricity), but also goes back
to the text to rephrase it in his own words. The first student, on the other hand, is heard
asking for help with spelling.

Because the students asked different questions and needed different kinds of
support, it cannot be stated that they received uniform instruction. However, students
within each condition did receive essentially the same instruction as others in the group
because I followed a script for task introduction (Appendix D), though this does not

guarantee non-contamination between groups. Instruction in the use of the essay

93

organizer was completed with both groups during the first intervention session.
Instruction in the Big6 Skills was completed during the first intervention session for the
treatment students, but not all of the treatment students (only 30% did) completed their
assigned topic research during the first intervention session. The rest of the treatment
group students completed the following steps: (a) task definition; (b) locate sources; (c)
access sources; and 4) consider use of the information. Information that seemed useful to
the students was typed or copied into a Word document and, in the next session, the
students completed their report. Table 2 presents task completion for each topic for the
treatment and control groups; the percentage of students who finished the topic assigned
in that session is reported. Students who did not complete their task in one session
completed it in the next session.

Table 2. Percentage of students in each group that completed assigned research topic in

one session.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Session 1" 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11" 12 13

(%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%)
Treatment 100 30 40 80 100 80 90 100 100 90 100 70 50
Control 100 60 7o 90 100 90 100 100 100 90 100 80 80

 

 

“ = pre-intervention session; 1’ = post-intervention session

Instruments. Two semi-structured interviews were conducted to capture the way
students evaluated their process and the product. The students also were asked to evaluate
the Big6 Skills approach to information problem solving. The purpose was to gather data
on the students’ perception of potential benefits of the Big6 Skills and the students’
potential metacognitive development. It was informative to document the students’
judgments about the task completion, processes, and products. The answers allowed for a

qualitative description of students’ metacognitive development.

94

Artifacts. The students’ posters for the Fair were printed out. Students kept their
original work in their folders while I kept one printout (or a copy) for further analyses. I
also saved copies of the student work on a memory stick. I compared the content of the
reports to the original Web pages to compare the amount of copied and pasted work as
opposed to information expressed by the students in their own words. Paragraphs
completely copied and pasted were not included in data analyses. Copied and pasted
information was taken into account when students used data from the Web for their
reports but engaged in an effort to add some of their own words (ofien revealed through
misspelling). However, on several occasions, several students copied and pasted
information and considered their task complete. The students seemed engaged in reading
and considering what to include or not, but finally, several reports reveal no attempt to
express the text in their own words. One student copied and pasted an entire report by a
person who described a tornado while watching a soccer game and posted it on the Web
(“Tornadoes on the Soccer Field”, a story by Nicole Gordon, at
http://eo.ucar.edu/webweather/story_tomado.htrnl) amounting to 506 words. It seemed
important therefore to account for copying and pasting of texts, especially texts such as
this one, which do not fit into the category of informational/expository writing and
reports. Had the student wrote from her own personal perspective or experience about a
tornado on a soccer field (or any other moments), this would certainly count as a part of
her report. However, this was not the case, and counting this text as a legitimate text of
506 words, while some of the best and most prolific writers wrote between 125 and 117
at pretest (one control and one treatment student, respectively, and with copying and

pasting 320 and 275 words, respectively), would misrepresent what students could do, or

95

learned to do.

Final activity. At the end of the study, the students picked one or two of their
written texts for the Science and Social Studies posters. The students created the titles
and decorations for the posters. The school had only one fourth grade class. Due to
competing schedules at the end of the school year for elementary students and junior
high, we could not organize the actual presentation, but the director of education was
willing to organize and coordinate the presentations with the fourth grade teacher during
the summer school. I shared with her that the student involvement was partially
motivated by the task itself and organizing their presentation was recognized as an

important project and culminating activity.

96

CHAPTER 4
RESULTS

This chapter contains the results of the study and is reported in five sections. The
presentation of the results follows the research questions. The research questions asked
whether the students receiving the intervention with the Big6 Skills achieved
significantly different outcomes in their information problem solving in comparison to
the control group as indexed by their writing quality, text length, and navigation.
Quantitative analyses addressed these questions. Additional quantitative analyses took
into account prior knowledge, motivation, and gender. Qualitative analysis addressed the
questions whether the treatment group exhibited metacognitive development through
using the Big6 Skill model in their information problem solving and their perceptions of
the instruction.

The analyses were performed using a repeated measures analysis of variance
(AN OVA). Mauchly’s test of sphericity showed homogeneity of the covariance matrix.
When there was a significant mean difference, an effect size (ES) was computed as the
difference of the posttest mean of the treatment group and the posttest mean of the
control group divided by the pooled standard deviation (SD). Following Cohen, 0.20 BS
is interpreted as a small size effect, 0.50 is a medium size effect (half a standard deviation
difference between means), and 0.80 and above is considered a large effect size (Howell,
2002). All analyses were set at a level of 0.05.

First, descriptive statistics for the control and the treatment group are provided for

VIQNCI, PIQ/PR1, PC, and TTCA in Table 3.

97

 

Table 3. Mean Performance of Students on VIQ/VIC, PRQ/PRI, PC, and T ICA.

 

 

Subtests Control Group Treatment group t(df) p-value
M SD M SD (18) P
VIQ/VCI 97.10 14.36 91.50 11.47 0.96 .35
PIQ/PR1 101.40 21.78 92.30 15.60 1.07 .30
PC 85.10 8.71 82.90 6.04 0.66 .52
TICA 19.80 0.42 19.30 1.25 1.203 .26

 

aEqual variances not assumed, degrees of freedom for the t-test = 11.02.

Given these variables, the control and the treatment groups were considered to be
comparable, indicating that parametric statistical analyses could be performed.
Research Question A

Research question A asked whether there is any significant difference in writing
quality (measured with the RAFT rubric) between the control and experimental groups.
Descriptive statistics for pretest and posttest means on the RAFT writing quality rubric
indicate that the control group received on average higher scores at pretest (M=9.20, SD=
2.66) than the treatment group (M=7.80, SD= 2.57), but the treatment group received
higher scores at posttest (M=13.20, SD=2.62) than the control group (M=12.30,
SD=2.83).

A repeated measures analysis of variance (AN OVA) showed that there was a
significant difference between pretest and posttest scores for both the control and the
treatment group in writing quality, F (1,18) =38.41, p < .001 (see Table 4). However, the

interaction between time of testing and group was not significant.

98

Table 4. Analysis of Variance for Writing Quality

 

 

Source df MSE F p
Time 1 180.625 38.41 < .001*
Time x Group 1 13.225 2.81 .111
Error 18 (4.7)

 

Writing quality was measured on four traits: topic focus, organization, sentence
length and variety, and mechanics (CUPS) of language use. Paired samples t-tests were
performed on these measures. There were significant differences in posttest scores for the
treatment group on three measures: topic focus, t(9)= -7.57, p= .001, organization quality,
t(9)=-4.33, p= .002, and sentence length and variety, t(9)=-3.10, p= .013. There were
significant differences in posttest scores for the control group on two measures: topic
focus, t(9)=-3.97, p= .003, and sentence length and variety, t(9)=-7.57, p= .001.
Research Question B

This question asked whether the treatment students wrote significantly longer texts
than the control students. Descriptive statistics for the means of pretest and posttest text
length indicate that the control group on average used more words in their reports at
pretest (M=63.20, SD=31.09) than the treatment group (M=48.80, SD=35.19). However,
the treatment group almost doubled the number of words from pretest to posttest
(M=92.20, SD=49.03), while the control group used fewer words at posttest (M=54.50,

SD=38.74). Accordingly, a repeated measures ANOVA showed a significant difference

99

between the groups in text length, F (l, 18) = 13.09, p = .002 (see Table 5), with a large
effect size (ES= 1.70). Figure 8 displays a graph of the pretest and posttest means for text
length and the interaction of time (pretest, posttest) and group (treatment, control).

Table 5. Analysis of Variance for Text Length

 

 

Source df MSE F p-value
Time 1 6027.025 7.13 .016*
Time x Group 1 11055.62 13.09 .002*
Error 18 (844.71)

 

Research Question C

This question asked whether the treatment group opened significantly more links
in comparison to the control group. Descriptive statistics for the means at pretest and
posttest for navigation scores indicate that the control group on average opened more
links during their searches at pretest (M=] .40, SD=0.70) than the treatment group
(M=l .20, SD=0.63). However, the treatment group on average almost doubled the
number of links opened from pretest to posttest (M=2.30, SD=0.82), and the control
group scored lower than the treatment group at posttest (M=1.90, SD=0.88).

A repeated measures AN OVA for navigation showed a significant change
between the pretest and posttest for the control and the treatment groups, F (1 , 18) =
14.96, p = .16 (see Table 6), though the interaction between the time and group was not

significant.

100

Figure 8. Display of Pretest and Posttest Means of Text Length

Estimated Marginal Means

 

Hm -t

1"} "'

sou

 

 

 

 

fl ' Group:
Pretest Posttest .. . . ..Control
Time Experimental

Table 6. Analysis of Variance for Navigation

 

 

Source df MSE F p—value
Time 1 6.40 14.96 .001*
Time x Group 1 .90 2.10 .16
Error 1 8 (.43)

 

In regard to navigation, there was no significant difference between the groups at

pretest, t(18)=.67,p=.51, and posttest, t(18)=-1.05,p=.31.

101

Analyses Related to Prior Knowledge, Motivation, and Gender

Correlational analysis of prior knowledge. Because there are some mixed
results in the extant research related to prior knowledge, additional analyses addressed
the relationship between text length, writing quality, navigation, and prior knowledge.
The correlations are summarized in Table 7.

Table 7. Correlations for Text Length, Writing Quality, Navigation with Prior Knowledge

 

Pretest Posttest

Prior Knowledge Prior Knowledge

 

 

R2 (p-value) R2 (p-value)

Control

Pretest Text Length .08 (.82) .32 (.38)
Posttest Text Length -.23 (.52) .27 (.46)
Pretest Writing Quality -.24 (.51) .22 (.54)
Posttest Writing Quality -.37 (.29) .17 (.65)
Pretest Navigation -.75* (.01) -.67* (.03)
Posttest Navigation -.72* (.02) -.27 (.45)
Treatment

Pretest Text Length .45 (.20) .36 (.31)
Posttest Text Length .48 (.15) .28 (.44)
Pretest Writing Quality -.02 (.96) .21 (.57)
Posttest Writing Quality .07 (.86) -.43 (.21)

 

102

Pretest Navigation -.31 (.39) -.46 (.18)

Posttest Navigation .24 (.51) .06 (.87)

 

Note. Numbers indicate eta-squared followed by p-values enclosed in parenthesis.

There were no significant correlations for the groups related to text length or
writing quality and prior knowledge. There was a significant moderate correlation
between prior knowledge and navigation scores at pretest for the control group. There
was no significant difference between the groups in prior knowledge at pretest,
t(18)=0.45, p=.66, or posttest, t(18) =-0.48, p=.63 (see Table 8). The total points possible

for prior knowledge was 5.

Table 8. Mean Numbers of Correct Responses Related to Prior Knowledge

 

M (SD) t(18) (p-value)

 

Pretest Treatment Group 3.80 (.92)
Pretest Control Group 4.00 (1.05) .45 (.66)
Posttest Treatment Group 4.20 (.92)
Posttest Control Group 4.00 (.94) -.48 (.63)

 

Motivation. During this study, most participants expressed that they did not like
to read or write but many of them nonetheless expressed that they liked doing research
for the fourth graders. A few students rather consistently gave low scores of 1 on all

questions because they perceived our sessions as “very hard” work.

103

The first question in the questionnaire related to motivation asked the students to
what extent, on the scale from 1 to 5, they were interested in reading and learning about a
certain topic (Q1); the second question was related to their interest in researching the
topic on the Internet (Q2); the third question probed the extent to which the students were
interested in learning about the topic in question from some other sources (e.g., teachers,
parents, friends) (Q3); and, finally, the fourth question asked to what extent they would
like to write about the topic in question for the fourth graders (Q4).

Descriptive statistics for the control and the treatment group for motivation across
all the topics and questions are presented in Table 9, along with the results of the t-test

analyses for the two groups.

Table 9. Means of Students ’ Responses to Motivation Questionnaire

Source Group 11 Mean SD t(18) p-value
Weather Q1 Control 10 4.00 .94

Treatment 10 3.40 1.51 1.07 .30
Weather Q2 Control 10 4.00 1.05

Treatment 10 3.50 1.08 1.05 .31
Weather Q3 Control 10 4.20 1.03

Treatment 10 3.70 1.42 .91 .38
Weather Q4 Control 10 4.10 .99

Treatment 10 4.00 1.16 .21 .84
Branches of the Control 10 3.40 1.17
government Q1 Treatment 10 1.90 .88 3.24M .01
Branches of the Control 10 3.10 1.29
government Q2 Treatment 10 3.20 1.48 -.16 .87
Branches of the Control 10 3.90 1.20
government Q3 Treatment 10 2.90 1.60 1.59 .13
Branches of the Control 10 3.90 1.45

104

Electricity Q1

Electricity Q2

Electricity Q3

Electricity Q4

Constitution Q1

Constitution Q2

Constitution Q3

Constitution Q4

Presidents Q1

Presidents Q2

Presidents Q3

Presidents Q4

Elec. Safety Q1

Elec. Safety Q2

Elec. Safety Q3

Elec. Safety Q4

Symbols of the

Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control

10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10

10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10

105

3.50
3.40
3.10
3.10
3.30
3.10
3.70
3.30
3.40
3.70
3.30
3.00
2.90
3.90
3.80
3.90
4.10
3.50
3.40
3.60
3.10
3.50
3.50
3.90
3.60
3.10
3.50
3.10
3.50
3.00
2.90
3.60
3.40
3.40

1.65
1.51
1.29
1.20
1.57
1.60
1.57
1.42
1.58
1.25
1.34
1.49
1.20
1.66
1.32
1.29
1.37
1.35
1.71
1.35
1.66
1.35
1.65
1.20
1.71
1.60
1.27
1.60
1.65
1.33
1.72
1.43
1.71
1.17

.58

.48

-.32

-.85

-.15

.69

.17

.15

-.34

.15

.74

.00

.45

-.62

-.55

.15

.28

.57

.64

.75

.47

.88

.50

.87

.88

.74

.89

.47

1.00

.66

.54

.59

.89

.78

Symbols of the
Government Q2

Symbols of the
Government Q3

Symbols of the
Government Q4

Electrical Past &
Present Q1

Electrical Past &
Present Q2

Electrical Past &
Present Q3

Electrical Past &
Present Q4
Magnets Q1
Magnets Q2
Magnets Q3
Magnets Q4
Conductors Q1
Conductors Q2
Conductors Q3
Conductors Q4

Tornadoes Q1

Tornadoes Q2

Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control
Treatment
Control

10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10

106

3.30
3.20
3.30
3.60
3.30
4.00
3.80
3.10
2.70
3.00
3.10
2.80
3.30
3.50
3.70
3.50
2.80
3.20
3.10
3.00
3.10
3.70
3.20
3.40
3.20
3.20
3.50
3.30
3.70
3.70
3.60
4.00
3.80
3.90

1.57
1.49
1.49
1.43
1.49
1.16
1.75
1.20
1.34
1.25
1.45
1.40
1.25
1.58
1.57
1.43
1.48
1.55
1.66
1.33
1.60
1.25
1.63
1.51
1.62
1.48
1.30
1.70
1.64
1.42
1.71
1.33
1.55
1.20

.16

-.15

.46

.30

.71

-.17

-.84

-.28

1.08

.14

-.15

.77

2.89

-.48

-.54

.14

.31

.87

.88

.65

.77

.49

.87

.41

.78

.30

.89

.88

.45

.78

.63

.60

.89

.76

 

Treatment 10 3.70 1.64 .3 l .76

Tornadoes Q3 Control 10 3.80 1.48

Treatment 10 3.10 1.45 1.07 .30
Tornadoes Q4 Control 10 4.20 1.23

Treatment 10 3.80 1.75 .59 .56

Descriptive statistics show that the students rated the task (Q4: writing for the
fourth graders) the highest (M=3.72, SD=1.21). Differences between the control and
treatment students related to motivation across the topics were not significant, except for
the topic of the three branches of the government. The control group expressed
significantly higher interest in this topic, t(18)=3.24, p=0.01. Correlations for motivation
related to the topic of research and prior knowledge are presented in Table 10.

Table 10. Correlations for Motivation and Prior Knowledge

 

Pretest Posttest

Prior Knowledge Prior Knowledge

 

 

R2 (p-value) R2 (p-value)
Control
Pretest Motivation -.45 (.19) -.25 (.49)
Posttest Motivation -.24 (.51) .00 (1.00)
Treatment
Pretest Motivation -.42 (.23) -.79*"' (.01)
Posttest Motivation -.50 (.14) -.52 (.13)

 

“Correlation significant at the 0.01 level.

107

There was a significant correlation between the prior knowledge and the scores on
the Likert motivation scale for the treatment group on the pretest topic of weather.
Gender analysis. The literature review reveals some mixed results related to
gender and learning with hypertext. A t-test was performed for the gender group
analyses. Table 11 provides descriptive statistics for the means of gender at the pretest

and posttest.

Table 11. Means for Gender at Pretest and Posttest for Writing Quality, Text Length, and

 

 

 

 

 

 

Navigation
Source/Gender M SD t(18) p
Pretest
Writing Quality
Male 9.40 2.75
Female 7.60 2.32 1.58 0.13
Text Length
Male 57.80 45.56
Female 39.80 18.95 1.15 0.26
Navigation
Male 1.30 .67
Female 1.30 .67 0.00 1.00
Posttest
Writing Quality
Male 13.40 2.59
Female 12.10 2.77 1.08 0.29

 

108

 

Text Length

 

Male 86.90 52.60

Female 59.80 38.95 1.31 0.21
Navigation

Male 2.20 .79

Female 2.00 .94 0.51 0.61

 

There were no significant differences in the scores for writing quality at pretest,
t(18) = 1.58, p= .13, or at posttest, t(18)=1.08, p= .29, related to gender. Also, no
significant difference were found between girls and boys in text length at pretest,

t(18) =1.15, p = .26, or at posttest, t(18)=1.31, p= .21, or in navigation at pretest, t(18) =
0.00, p = 1.0, or at posttest, t(18)=0.51, p= .61.
Research Question D

One of the interests in this study was whether scaffolding students in research on
the Web through the Big6 Skills steps would contribute to students’ metacognitive
development related to information processing skills. A semi-structured questionnaire
was orally administered to the treatment students two times, at the mid-point and end of
the study. The qualitative analysis of the semi-structured questionnaire revealed that the
treatment students exhibited some development of their metacognitive awareness of
regard to the process and the products related to their Web searches.

Product/Process. The frrst question asked the students to evaluate their work and
to evaluate whether they think they did what was required. Most students thought that
they did well. Some students were focused on evaluating the product in answering this
question, while some were focused on the process. For example, one student focused on

the product and noted: “As a grade, I did ‘medium’. The report would be better if I used

109

more information.” The same student noted toward the end of the project that she “did a
good job, as ‘five’ on the scale from one through five” because she “used a lot of
information.” Several students were more focused on the process and referred to their use
of resources in evaluating their performance. For example, one student noted: “Yes, I
looked at various information sources and understood how to use them.” One student
responded, “Yes, I checked on one source and wrote about it, then I checked another
source...”

Skills. In regard to the potential skills that the students learned and could use in
the future, some students referred to the online search skills, while some focused on the
writing skills. For example, several students noted, “I learned to use various sources.”
Some students noted, “I learned to use research skills, finding information that I
understand.” “I learned to look into further links.” “I learned how to use the switch [on
the screen] so I can see how circuits go through the wires.” Those who referred to their
writing noted that they could use the skills they employed in their writing. For example,
“I learned that I should have a conclusion.” “I learned taking notes.” “I learned to pay
attention to spelling and grammar.” Several students noted that they learned to go to their
texts “back and forth”. For example: “I learned to go back and forth...” and, “You
always have to go back to your report because you still have to see whether it is good.
This is a good tool for everybody who has to write. So I can use it if I have to do essay
again.”

When asked to evaluate their work and skills over time, several students were able
to evaluate why their report was better at the second evaluation, which occurred toward

the end of the study. For example, one student noted, “Yes, the more information that can

110

 

be understood, the better it is. I fixed the report, organized it, and used the words that can

be understood by fourth graders.” When asked what they would do differently next time,

9, ‘6 99 661

most students stated that they would write “a longer piece, get more information,
could be better... the better order, like take notes and then look what’s most important. . .”
Research Question E

One of the questions on the semi-structured questionnaire asked the students in
the treatment condition whether they perceived any benefits in implementing the Big6
Skills approach to information search and management. All of these students responded
that they found the Big6 Skills usefirl and provided a number of reasons: “It keeps me on
track.” “I can follow the steps.” “It makes it easier to understand how to do a report.”
“It’s helpful. It could get more difficult so it’s there when you need it.” “So that I can do
the best job I can.” Similarly, several students noted that it is helpfirl because you know
which steps to follow “as a reminder.” Also, “It provides steps so that I can do a full
report. I can use it in my other kind of reports.” When asked to provide an example of
other reports, this particular student said, “proj ects—like we did on South America.”
However, in spite of all the positive comments that these students had to share about the
Big6 Skills, they did not learn to use it independently.

I started each session with the treatment students by asking them whether they
remembered what their task was. Depending on their answers, I would share additional
information. Some students answered, “to write a report”, “to search information for
fourth graders”, etc. For those students who seemed to lack awareness of their audience, I

would remind them that the report is a part of the Social Studies and Science Fair posters

to be presented to fourth graders. I would remind the students to use the essay organizer

111

and check their understanding of the purpose of the organizer. Although the students
unifonnly seemed to understand the purpose when asked about it, they also almost
uniformly did not engage in reading and following instructions presented on the visual
organizer. As already noted, these students were not used to independently using visual
organizers. Their work in the computer lab was to a large degree dedicated to typing up

information that they already gathered in the library guided by the librarian, a teacher,

 

and at least one paraprofessional. While their studying in this project was intended to r...
help them develop a metacognitive awareness about the Big6 Skills steps, the task might ‘
have presented too much of a novelty for them or may have not been taught for a long

enough period of time for them to demonstrate independent proficiency. \

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CHAPTER 5
DISCUSSION
This chapter summarizes and discusses the findings of the study. The discussion
includes some theoretical and instructional implications, along with the limitations of the
study, followed by a conclusion.
Summary and Discussion of the Findings
This study was designed to investigate whether students with LD could be
supported in their searches on the Web and writing reports on topics in social studies and
science. With increased recognition that literacy skills include not only reading and
writing, but also information processing skills and technology use, a repeated measure
design was used to examine the effects of intervention in text search and information
management. The treatment and the control group significantly improved on the
measures of writing quality and navigation, with the treatment group significantly
outperforming the control group on the measure of text length.

It was anticipated that: (a) students in the treatment condition would write
qualitatively better expository texts; (b) students in the treatment condition would write
longer expository texts; (0) students in the treatment group would improve in their
navigation of web sites by opening more links; (d) students in the treatment condition
would increase their metacognitive awareness related to their information problem
solving; and (e) students would perceive instruction in information problem solving with

the Big6 Skills as beneficial.

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A repeated measures AN OVA showed that there was a significant difference
between pretest and posttest scores for both the control and the treatment group in writing
quality. Both the treatment and the control groups were provided with the essay map
organizer and were instructed to use it for the purposes of organizing their written
reports, while the treatment group was also instructed in the Big6 Skills model of
information problem solving. Writing quality was measured on four traits: topic focus,
organization, sentence variety, and the mechanics of language use (capitalization,
punctuation, and spelling). Paired samples t-tests indicated that there were significant
differences in posttest scores for the treatment group on three measures: topic focus,
organization, and sentence length and variety. There were significant differences in
posttest scores for the control group on two measures: topic focus and sentence length
and variety. There were no significant posttest score differences in the mechanics of
language use for either group. In the work performed by the treatment group, instructed
in the Big6 Skills steps, step four of the Big6 Skills asked the students to organize
selected information. In the process of looking at their notes and organizing their
information, some students iteratively reviewed their texts, expanded them, and
organized them in a more coherent manner.

The results of this study also show that the treatment group wrote even longer
texts following instruction than the control group. The results on the measure of text
length were significant, with an interaction effect for group, with a large effect size
(ES=1.7). It seems that the fourth step of the Big6 Skills (organize your information) and
the fifth step (synthesize), supports writing as a recursive process. Possibly, these

students might have had engaged in further revisions if the sixth step (evaluate your

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product and process) was followed more systematically. However, often there was not
enough time within one school period to systematically incorporate the sixth step.

In regard to the text length, it seems important to illustrate how reports written by
the same student might differ dramatically, whether the word count gain is minimal (as in
the writing of the control student GK: +1 word), or quite large (+135), as illustrated by
the writing of JB (a treatment student).

Student: GK

m: (March, 2009; word count = 55)

In the first section, I read about how much floods of rain dropped.

When I read the second section, the thunderstorms are very dangerous, but came fi'om
the west coast.

Lastly, the bolts of lighting are higher than any lightening thunderstorms. I dislike when
it’s rain, or thunderstorms. This is dangerous for people right now.

This report indicates that the student opened all three links on the Web portal at pretest,
but her report was much more coherent at posttest. Her report completed during the
posttest follows.

Posttest: (June, 2009; word count = 56)

 

Tornadoes
This report is about Tornadoes.
Tornadoes cause heavy rains, warm, moist air and lightenings too. Tornadoes always
destroy houses, stores, banks, and other buildings. Tornadoes can also kill people and

animals too.

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If you think that there is a tornado coming, then this is the time to turn your radio or your
television.
While the text length is approximately the same for the two reports, the posttest report
seems to be much more coherent: it includes the topic title, it reads as an expository piece
as opposed to a list-like writing as on the pretest sample, and the concluding sentence
includes an awareness of her audience.

Consider also the coherence of the texts on pretest and posttest, a measure not
used on the rubric, completed by one student fi'om the treatment group.
Student: JB
Pretest: (March, 2009. word count = 232

Weather

Lighting and Thunder are very dangerous you could ayefi'om it. Lighting is a bright flash
of electricity produced by a thunderstorm.

Posttest: (June, 2009, word count =15 72.

Tornadoes by (pseudonym)

Today I will write about tornadoes. When you are at a school you bend your head down
on a wall and you don ’t talk with anyone during a tornado, when you are in a car you get
out of the car and you go to a low spot in the ground. Tornadoes are really dangerous
and they can kill you either outside or inside. When a tornado occurs then people should
be in a basement, bathroom, or something without windows.

A tornado is a form of air and how its made is that there is warm air. A tornado is

caused by thunderstorms. Tornadoes can come fiom any direction. Some of them change

116

 

direction. Tornadoes are so fast and they spin fast you don ’t want to be in the middle of
one.

The most tornadoes come in Texas, and sometimes in Minesotta aslo. Always remember
that you have to hide and you are important not electronics.

The net gain in text length of this student is quite remarkable. While the first
sentence from the posttest writing might seem to come from her prior knowledge, the
second and third paragraphs are related to her online search, her conclusion gives a set of
directions related to her audience.

The net gain for the treatment group varied from plus one word to plus 167 words,
with only one student having a net loss of one word. The net gain for the control group
varied from the net gain of 44 words to a net loss of 63. Overall, the majority of the
students wrote a sentence, a couple of sentences, or a short paragraph at pretest, while the
writing at posttest was longer in the treatment group, who also showed an increased
awareness of the audience. Here are some examples: “This is a report for the fourth
graders”; “Always remember that you have to hide and you are important, not
electronics”; “You should always listen to the forecast so you know when there’s a
tornado”; “When you live in warm weather, then beware of the lightning”; “Turn your
light off because you save money”; “Next, you are going to learn about parallel circuits”;
“Last, you are learning about series circuits”. In writing their reports, both groups of
students engaged in copying and pasting. The text blocks that were copied verbatim from
Web pages were excluded from the analysis of text length. The treatment and the control

groups did not differ in the amount of text (number of words) they copied and pasted at

pretest, t(18)=-.06, p=.96, or at posttest, t(18)=-1.24, p=.23.

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In the present study, the students engaged in an increased practice of writing and
completing one report per topic in one or two sessions. Some of the students, as revealed
through a qualitative analysis and field notes, learned to go back and forth to their texts,
in order to revise them, and make them more understandable to their audience. It may
therefore also be assumed that increased writing practice contributed to large gains, in
addition to instruction. The gains in writing may also partially be contributed to the task
itself. Many students stated that they did not like to write or read, but considered the task
important“. . .because it is really important for fourth graders to know about our
Constitution. . .”, or “. . .because it is really important for the fourth graders to know how
to avoid electric shock,” etc.

Several additional aspects should be considered in the discussion of the results, as
revealed through the field notes. The writing instruction in the school—the site of this
study—followed a prescribed curriculum in which students were taught various steps of
writing and were engaged in practicing certain skills. For example, in mini-lessons on
descriptive writing, the students might be presented with a picture of a boy, and then
asked to describe the boy by using several adjectives. The students also practiced
paragraph writing with a house as a scaffold: a foundation stands for the main idea, walls
for details, and a roof for the conclusion. The students did not necessarily perceive these
exercises as writing per se. When asked about writing, some students indicated that “on
Fridays, we do heroes’ poems, favorite restaurants, etc...”

Although students with LD benefit from explicit instruction, such instruction may
also lead to treating writing as a distinct element in the curriculum. Such an approach

may convert the writing process into a set of procedures (Nystrand, 2001). Also, the solid

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house metaphor of paragraph writing stands in contrast to writing as a recursive process
(Hayes, 1996). The findings of this study reveal that the students benefited from using
organizing frameworks: the Big6 Skills as a scaffold for the steps needed to be performed
in research and writing reports, and the essay map, showing that a piece of writing should
include an introduction, main ideas, details, and a conclusion. These findings seem
important in view of Englert’s (2009) suggestion that more instructional studies should be
conducted to better inform teachers who use heuristics and routines in their literacy
instruction.

In regard to navigation, it should be noted that both groups opened a limited
number of the Web pages at pretest, although it was explained to them that they should
explore the Web resources, and these resources were pointed to on the screen. A repeated
measures AN OVA for navigation showed a significant change between the pretest and
posttest for the control and treatment groups. Although the students opened more links at
posttest, the actual number of links opened remained small when students were left to
explore on their own. Therefore, it is not clear how to interpret a significant moderate
negative correlation for the control group between prior knowledge and navigation scores
at pretest. One possible explanation might be that prior knowledge might actually
preclude hypertext explorations as some students might rely more on their background
knowledge. This might be unique to students with LD who engage in limited reading for
the purposes of accomplishing their tasks. Because number of nodes accessed (i.e., links)
is related to knowledge acquisition (e.g., Salrneron et al., 2005), this outcome for the
present study indicates that teaching students the importance of accessing more than one

or two online sources while learning with the Web is essential. However, the findings in

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this study related to navigation also seem to be related to the design of the Web pages, a
feature only superficially addressed here. Some Web pages seemed to be designed to
invite a reader to interact (e.g., click on an image) and those seemed to be especially
attractive to the students in this study (e.g., http://www.miamisci.org/af/slrr/frankenstein/
safety.html). For example, data for the topic of electricity show that the students opened
on average a higher number of links and hyperlinks for that topic (M =4. 55, SD =2.70),
as opposed to those presented at pretest (M= 1.30, SD=0.66) or posttest (M=2.10,
SD=0.85). While most of the sessions were conducted individually, due to competing
schedules at mid-point of the study, two sessions consisted of two students and two
sessions of four students (one with treatment students and one with control), so precise

data during instruction related to number of links opened was difficult to attain.

In addition to Web design, the preference for certain topics might have been
related to the student current situation. For example, “I just learned about that
[Constitution] in social studies” would indicate that a student might not be interested in
investigating further while, on the other hand, a student might read about electrons and
note excitingly: “I never knew that”, and seek to explore the related sites in depth.
Additional analyses were performed that took into account prior knowledge and
motivation. Overall, there were no significant correlations for prior knowledge and
writing quality, text length, and navigation. No significant differences in the students’
outcomes were related to gender, although the boys scored higher at pretest and posttest
on these measures.

The students seemed to be motivated to complete the task because they were

engaged in informing fourth graders in their school about their findings. The results

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indicate that the students had more interest in doing research and writing for their peers
(M =3.72, SD =1.21) than they had in the topics explored (M =3.31, SD =1 .07), although
the difference was not significant. Motivation is an under-researched topic in education
(Greeno, Collins, & Resnick, 1996), yet important for student engagement (Troia et al., in
press). Some students commented, while assigning a low number on the Likert scale
related to the task, “I like the idea of [doing] research for the fourth graders, but writing is
hard”, or “I like this [Web] research for the fourth graders, but not the typing. . .”.
Therefore, even when students assigned a low number to the task (of developing Social
Studies and Science F air posters for the fourth graders), some students distinguished the
part of doing research for the fourth graders, which they viewed positively, from writing
their reports, which they viewed negatively. Students who experience difficulties in
reading often experience difficulties in writing. Creating tasks in which the students read
with a certain purpose and write for an audience beyond the teacher seems especially
important when working with students who might experience difficulties in these two
areas. Based on the field notes, it seems that those students who struggled with spelling
would be the first candidates for abandoning the project, and consequently, some of them
consistently rated all of the points on the motivation scale low because they perceived
reading and writing as “hard work”.

The ability to temporarily retain information while processing other incoming
information plays an important part in reading (Swanson et al., 2000), and this ability, as
noted earlier, may be particularly important for hypertext reading in view of its
multimodality. The Big6 Skills helped the students in view of the complex steps required

for researching, reading, and writing. All the students were uniform in acclaiming the

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Big6 Skills was useful because it kept them on task or simply made their work easier
because they could follow the steps, refer to them as necessary, etc. Yet, it also seems
important to note that the students never took “ownership” of the steps. In a sense, I was
their scaffold, rather than the scaffold itself. On two occasions I added the same Big6
Skills steps with a bit more textual elaboration (another version of the Big6 Skills), but
that strategy also did not seem to work. Providing more (written) information to the
students with LD in reading might simply be counterproductive. Therefore, while the
results were significantly different for the treatment group that used the Big6 Skills steps
on the measure of text length and text organization, it also seems that another scaffold,
perhaps with fewer steps, could be implemented. On the other hand, it could be that the
step six of the Big6 Skills should be practiced consistently because it asks the students to
evaluate their work. At that point, students might consider further revising of their texts
and, at the same time, might become more cognizant of the strategies that worked (or not)
during their interaction with the Web, information processing and management. In this
sense, developing metacognitive awareness is an important aspect in learning.
Developing metacognitive awareness is akin to developing habits of mind where students
would learn to regularly evaluate their work and is something that should probably be
taught throughout the school year.
Theoretical Implications

Findings from this study extend the work on writing from multiple sources and a
new literacies theory of reading (e.g., Leu et al., 2004, Leu et al., in press) according to
which reading and writing are still viewed as central to literacy, but new strategies for the

location, evaluation, and use of information are required. Reading has been, and

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continues to be, predominantly discussed as text decoding and text comprehension,
especially when considering students with LD (NICHD, 2000). In addition, reading is
often examined as a process on its own, rather than a process that serves a certain
function: read to learn, read to function in a society, read to write (communicate), etc. By
examining reading as online information problem solving, reading activities become
inquiry activities.

The findings fiom this study confirm that students involved in learning with the
Web need training and support in search skills and management of information (Kuiper et
al., 2005). Hypertext reading involves constructing a text and in that sense is different
from reading as interpreting texts. Approaching reading as information problem solving
(Eisenberg & Berkowitz, 1999) allowed the treatment students in this study to become
more strategic learners, as indicated through an open-structured questionnaire. These
findings are in line with a large body of research (e.g., Dreher et al., 1997; Englert et a1,
1991; Gersten et al., 2001) that shows that explicit instruction in strategic learning and
thinking helps students to overcome their difficulties. The findings related to increased
quality of writing by both groups as measured by the rubric are also in line with previous
research that documents positive effects of visual organizers for students with LD (e. g.,
Kim, Vaughn, Wanzek & Wei, 2004).

In creating authentic tasks for K-12 students, it is possible to engage students with
difficulties in reading and writing in literacy activities. In online literacy activities,
students construct their own path to text construction and comprehension. Increased
navigation results in an increased access to and location of information (Salmeron et al.,

2005). In the process, both offline and online strategies are employed: readers might read

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texts in a linear fashion on the screen, but also read images, icons, and multiple texts. In
this sense, it seems important to extend our knowledge of reading as a semiotic process,

in addition to our understanding of reading as a linguistic process (e.g., Kress & van

Leeuwen, 2006).

As technology reshapes our notion of what constitutes “basic skills”, learning
with the Web calls for instruction in which reading, writing, and informational skills
should be viewed as interconnected. This interconnection might be especially important
for students with disabilities who are sometimes taught skills in isolation. It is important i
to reiterate here that instruction in offline reading and writing should likewise be
interconnected, one of the points stressed in Englert’s (2009) recent work. Otherwise,
transporting students into the new paradigms for learning may simply compound their
difficulties (Leu, Kinzer, Coiro, & Cammack, 2004) and add more skills to be practiced
in isolation.

Along with computer labs in some schools, there are often separate library rooms.
As new environments for learning are established separately fi'om the older ones, a
division between the searches for information, managing information, reading, and
writing might also be practiced separately rather than integratively. As noted earlier, the
students in this study did their research in the library, then wrote up their reports on the
worksheets and then typed their reports in the computer lab. Such a division in the steps
of learning (to conduct research, manage and organize the results, and then write
information) does not seem to fit into the new paradigms of learning or developing 21St

century skills. A report on 21St century skills (Casner-Lotto et al., 2006) reveals that the

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“three Rs” are still fundamental to new workforce entrants but that applied skills, such as
competencies in information technology (IT) applications, are also very important.

The way teachers understand and implement theories of literacy affects students’
understanding of what counts as literacy (Jewitt, 2008). What counts as literacy in our
contemporary society has dramatically changed over the last century (Resnick & Resnick,
197 7) and the term literacies rather than literacy might better capture this change. Re-
theorizing literacy, therefore, has implications for instruction, to which I turn next.
Instructional Implications . I

This study confirms that informational problem solving tasks might be amenable
to instructional efforts (e.g., Symons et al., 2001). The students with LD and learning
difficulties benefited from instruction related to search, selection, and organization of
information found on the Web. Research on instruction in the Web environments could
benefit from examining the implementation of the Big6 Skills systematically (i.e.
allowing enough time to attend to the sixth step). Because the sixth step refers to
reflective questions on a product (e.g., report) and a process (e.g., strategies in search),
this step seems crucial for metacognitive development of students with LD. This study
also underscores the importance of motivation through establishing carefully constructed
tasks that involve an audience beyond the teacher.

This study confums the importance of scaffolded instruction in instructing
students with LD (Stone, 1998; Englert, 2009). Through scaffolded instruction, using the
Big6 Skills and the essay map, the treatment students’ writing quality significantly
increased on three measures (topic focus, organization, and sentence variety). The text

length also significantly increased. Because the use of the Big6 Skills benefited the

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students, it seems that this theoretical information problem solving model might have
useful application in instruction beyond this study. When applied in practice, however, it
also seems that theoretical models could be adapted to better accommodate diverse
learners.

In learning with the Web, there are still skills related to traditional literacy skills
such as comprehending and evaluating important information in texts. Learning with the
Web environment, however, should change literacy instruction. With ever expanding
links and authors behind the links, learning with the Web becomes more complicated
than learning with a textbook approved by the district. Learning with the Web might not
start with finding the main ideas first, but to search first of all for a reliable source. This
form of learning does not seem to be taking place on a daily basis in the schools but is an
important part of learning with the Web (Coiro, 2007).

On the other hand, in this era of accountability, teachers might question the utility
of instructional processes that do not lend themselves directly to improving scores on
state tests. With an increased number of schools proclaimed “failing”, there is a turn to
talking about “demographics”, not as data that should require teachers and principals to
consider differentiated instruction, but it seems to function as a code word for “problems”
(Curcic, Gabel, Zeitlin, Cribaro, & Glarner, in press). Ironically, the students in the 21St
century may be guided to a path of “three Rs” (Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic) rather
to the 21St century skills. As Hartman (2000) noted almost a decade ago, “what
constitutes literacy is already being reshaped by the influence of media” (p. 281). The

curriculum, however, seems to be less reshaped, with some tendencies toward becoming

more—rather than less—essentialist worldwide, including the US. (Tamatea, 2005).

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Research on online reading suggests that hypertext may present material that is
more difficult to read than print material for both experienced and competent readers as
well as less able readers (e.g., Coiro, 2007; McEneaney, 2003). The students in the
present study varied in reading and writing strategies. Some students who showed modest
gains in, for example, scores on text length, were more skillful than some other students
before this study began. The complexity of learning with the Web calls for a much more
nuanced understanding than currently offered.

Limitations of the Study

The study was conducted predominantly with the researcher as the instructor in a
number of individualized sessions. Most sessions were truly individualized because they
were predominantly conducted one-on-one, and also because the researcher responded to
the unique questions of each participant. Thus, treatment fidelity was potentially
compromised and so the findings of this study must be viewed as tentative at best.

The number of topics was limited to 13 because of: (a) the number of students
involved, (b) the session scheduling took into account each student’s schedule so that the
student would not miss the introduction of new concepts in his or her classes, and (c) the
end-of-the-school year competing schedules. The students’ gains would perhaps be larger
over an even more extended period of time.

The school where the study took place accommodates predominantly students
with LD and, in that sense, does not necessarily resemble other school settings, public or
private, which limits the generalizability of the findings. Because the students were
matched on several characteristics related to their cognitive abilities, reading

performance, and facility with technology, the results might be generalizable to students

127

 

 

 

with a reading disability. However, this population is not as homogeneous as it sounds,
and the outcomes might differ for different groups of students with LD. It also should be
noted that two students had concomitant ADI-1D, and a few students had low VIQ scores,
and consequently, the results might be less generalizable than otherwise.

The students were presented with predetermined and loaded links within the
Google account rather than having an option to research freely on the topics. Although
this approach resembles many schools’ approaches to Internet instruction, it also should
be noted that the task as constructed might be limiting. For example, two students wanted
to conduct separate searches for images on Google, but I discouraged those explorations
so that all the students were presented with the same sources of information. Also, the
task required writing, and this part did not seem to be particularly appealing to a number
of students.

Using the Big6 Skills with the essay map resulted in writings that were much
more structured than the writings of the students created at pretest. Some of the best
writing pieces, however, occurred at the mid-point of the project. Although at this point
the students were still guided in their projects, it is also true that toward the end of the
school year students seemed to be less focused. Thirteen topics appeared to be quite
demanding for the students, because they were involved in other reading and writing
projects as part of the standard curriculum. Also, the school engaged students in a variety
of activities (plays, music performances) that needed extra-curricular hours. Embedding
the task involved and the Web research over the entire school year might have seemed
more natural, and resulted in even larger gains in these students’ outcomes. Instruction

conducted over an extended time period would also allow time to teach students to

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tier-1n

critically evaluate information they found on the Web as proposed by advocates of a new
literacies framework (e.g., Coiro, 2007; Leu et al., 2006). Although the strategies
proposed by these scholars are similar to the information problem solving employed in
this study (e.g., locate and access information), there is also a recognition of the ways
printed sources of information differ from those found on the Web. Locating and
critically evaluating sources on the Web is an important task in research using the Web.
This aspect of information problem solving was not examined in this study and
consequently limits its scope.
Conclusion

Changing literacy practices calls for examination of instruction in how to access,
locate, manage, and communicate information. In this instructional study, the students
were guided in the search, selection, organization, and communication of their research
performed on the Web. The primary goal of the study was to investigate how to support
students’ interaction with the Web for the purposes of writing reports on topics from
social studies and science. The outcomes of the study were based on the quantitative
analyses of students’ written expository reports based on measures of writing quality, text
length, and navigation. The control students improved in writing quality and navigation.
The treatment students improved in writing quality, text length, and navigation, and
significantly outperformed the control students on the measure of text length. Writing
quality was measured on four traits: topic focus, organization, sentence length and
variety, and the mechanics of language use. There were significant differences in posttest

scores of the treatment group on three of these traits: topic focus, organization quality,

129

 

 

and sentence length and variety. There were significant differences in posttest scores of
the control group on only two: topic focus and sentence length and variety.

The Big6 Skills seemed to keep students on track and served as a scaffold that
may be successfully employed in a complex task of information processing and
management. Using the Big6 Skills with the essay map resulted in reports that were
longer and better organized than reports written by control group students who only were

taught how to use an essay map.

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Appendix A
Pre-intervention Session

Lesson Plan #1: Instruction in the task and search for information: WEATHER
(Twenty students, individually)

 

Date:

Student:
Beginning Time:
End time:

 

 

 

 

Objectives: 1. Introduce the task.
2. Introduce the purpose of the task.
3. Explain the task.
4. Administer Likert motivation scale
5. Administer T/F questions
6. Present and explain the Web portal.
Materials: 1. Video camera.
2. Internet access.
3. Record sheets (T/F, navigation, Likert scale, Questionnaire).

 

Protocol to follow before instruction:
:1 Set the video camera.

1:1 Check the Internet access.

0 Check the computer connections.

 

Protocol to follow during instruction:

Introduce the task

Introduce the purpose

Explain the task

Introduction to the Web portal.

The student takes notes in a Word document.

TICA: Check off the skills on the TICA Checklist.

Navigation: record the number of links opened on the record sheet.

Save the student work into his or her folder on the desktop after printing out two
copies. One copy is placed into the student’s folder and one into the instructor’s
folder.

000013000

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1. Read the script.
Script:

“We will be working on the Science and Social Studies Fair. Our task is to search
for information and write reports that will be placed on this poster [show the blank
poster]. There are various topics here [point at the Web portal] and each topic has three
links. You will explore the links and read information.

(a) Your task is to write a report for the Science and Social Studies Fair to be shared
with fourth graders here at your school so they can learn topics covered in higher
grades.

(b) Click on the page [topicz Weather] Explore the links to find information about
rain, thunderstorms, and lightening.

(c) Open a Word document and take notes. Write down some important ideas and
some details. You may also include some images, if you wish.

((1) Copy the URL (the Web addresses) where you found information for references at
the end.

(e) When your report is completed, read over it and try to rephrase your sentences so
that fourth graders can understand them.”

2. Administer Likert motivation scale

Before we look at the Web portal with Web pages, I am interested in how
much you are interested in the topics we will research. So, I will read some
statements to you and I want you to tell me if you agree or disagree (administer the
Likert motivation scale).

3. Administer T/F questions.
Our topic today is weather. Let’s see how much you already know about
weather. I will read five statements and you tell me whether they are true or false:

Here are the questions. Listen carefully:
(1) Rain forms from water vapor in the air. T/F
(2) We can see water vapor in the air. T/F
(3) Thunderstorm with lightening is dangerous. T/F
(4) Lightening in itself is not dangerous. T/F
(5) Lightening is gas. T/F

4. Save the student’s work Print out two copies.

132

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Appendix B
TICA Checklist
Computer Basics A

q Turn a computer on/off
q Use the mouse/track pad
q Follow classroom and school rules for computer use
q Open programs and files using icons and/or the Start Menu (PC)
q Log on and log off from individual file space
q Create/open a new folder/file
q Launch a word processor
q Open a word processing file
q Type a short entry in a word processing file
q Copy text
q Cut text
q Paste text
q Delete text
q Name a word processing file and save it
q Open a new window
q Open a new tab
1 Web Searching Basics
q Locate and open a search engine
q Type key words in the correct location of a search engine
q Type addresses in the address window
q Use the refi'esh button
q Use the “BACK” and “FORWARD” buttons
q Use a search engine for simple key word searches

 

General Navigation Basics

 

q Maximize/minimize windows
q Open and quit applications
q Toggle between windows

 

(Source:

http ://www.newliteracies.uconn.edu/iesproj ect/documents/TICA_Basic_Skills_Checklist.
do)

133

 

Appendix C

Handout 1—Big6 Skills The "Big6TM" is copyright © ( 1987) Michael B. Eisenberg and
Robert E. Berkowitz.

#1 #2 #3

Task Information location
Definition Seeking And Access

    

What
needs to
be done?

 

#4

moor W m

Howwllll
brawl
didn't/lob
ME?

      

MO l.‘ EMA-ml.

134

 

 

Appendix D
Script

“We will be working on the Science and Social Studies Fair. Our task is to search
for information and write reports that will be placed on this poster [show the blank
poster]. There are various topics here [point at the Web portal] and each topic has three
links. You will explore the links and read information.

(f) Your task is to write a report for the Science and Social Studies Fair to be shared
with fourth graders here at your school so they can learn topics covered in higher
grades.

(g) Click on the page [topicz Weather] Explore the links to find information about
rain, thunderstorms, and lightening.

(h) Open a Word document and take notes. Write down some important ideas and
some details. You may also include some images, if you wish.

(i) Copy the URL (the Web addresses) where you found information for references at
the end.

(i) When your report is completed, read over it and try to rephrase your sentences so
that fourth graders can understand them.”

135

Appendix E

The Essay Map Graphic Organizer

Essay Map

«a

You can review your map and print
it at any time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

) Print my essay map.
> Take me back to my map.

II<EXIT>

£21303 lRA'N-CTE tor m on Ranfl/nteThtrkag A: rages reserved. Outfits oa- u w

 

Source: Copyright © 2006 IRA/NCTE.

136

 

Appendix F

Intervention

Lesson plan #2:

Modeling Instruction: Curriculum elements of information problem solving with
questions to guide the process.

Date:

Student:
Beginning Time:
End time:

 

 

 

 

Objectives:

1. A student is introduced to the first four steps of the Big6 research process. I go over the
handout of The Big6 Skills Curriculum adopted fi'om The "Big6TM" - copyright © (1987)
Michael B. Eisenberg and Robert E. Berkowitz (Appendix C).

2. The student is introduced to the Essay map handout (Appendix E).

3. The instructor models the first four steps of the inforrnation-problem solving with Big6
Skills.

4. The student completes information problem solving on his or her own with the first
four steps in the Big6 Skills.

Materials: 1. Video camera.
2. Internet access.
3. Computer connection.
4. Likert scale motivation sheet.
5. Topic T/F questions.
6. Navigation score sheet.

 

Protocol to follow before instruction:
Check the video.

Check the Internet access.

T/F questions

Likert scale motivation sheet.
Navigation score sheet.
Questionnaire

DUUDUD

 

Protocol to follow during instruction:

:1 Instructor models task definition.

El Instructor models information-searching strategies.
:1 Instructor models information location and access.
:1 Instructor models use of information.

137

 

Appendix G

Intervention: Modeling Steps 5 and 6 of the Big6 Skills

Lesson plan #3:

Modeling Instruction: Curriculum elements of information problem solving with

questions to guide the process (Synthesis and Evaluation: steps 5 & 6 of the Big6 Skills).

Objective:

1. Model how to synthesize information.
2. Model how to evaluate the product.
3. Model how to evaluate the process.

Materials:
1. Internet access.

2. Web portal: Page Creator with Weather
3. Guiding questions: questions to guide the process and questions to evaluate the

product.

 

Protocol to follow before instruction:

1:) Check the camera

CI Check the Internet access.
0 Open the Web portal
121 Open the page Weather

 

Protocol to follow during instruction:

DDDUDU

Instructor models the synthesis of information.

Instructor thinks aloud and shares the guiding points for information organization
Instructor thinks aloud and shares the guiding questions.

Instructor synthesizes information.

Instructor models the evaluation of the product and the process.

Instructor asks the student to evaluate the product and the process.

 

INSTRUCTION with modeling:

Step 5 of the Big6Skills: Synthesis: How will I organize my information?

Guiding points for organizing information:

Introduction

Main ideas

Supporting/explaining details

Consider illustrating main ideas or details with pictures
Conclusion

138

(b) Guiding questions:

° Is my text understandable?
Could even young readers understand what I wrote?
' What are some parts that need rewriting?
° Rewrite/paraphrase: if necessary, go back to the Web pages.
0 Look back at your text: Are there any words that need to be
explained or clarified?

Step 6 of the Big6 Skills: Evaluation:
1 evaluate my product and process and the student does the same against the
guiding questions:

b) Judge the product (effectiveness)
- Did I do what was required?
- Is the task completed?
- Is my presentation going to be understood by my peers?
- Will they be able to learn anything fi'om it?
c) Now that I look at my product:
- Is there anything I can do better the next time I conduct research?
- Could I be more efficient in locating information?
- Could I be more efficient in organizing information?
- Could I be more efficient in creating my final piece?

Additional guiding questions (based on Jansen in Eisenberg & Berkowitz, 1999,
pp. 120-121).
' Is my assignment complete according to the defined task?
Did I give proper credit to my sources?
How efficient was I at choosing and finding my information?
What did I learn how to do that I can use again?
How can I use the skills again?
How well did I do on my project? (The student can give a rating or grade)
What could I do better next time?

139

 

Appendix H

Motivation Scale

Instructor: 1 am going to read you some statements and I want you to tell me if you agree
or disagree. You can also agree a lot- like “strongly agree ” which I will mark as 5, or
disagree a lot- “strongly disagree ”, which I will mark with 1. WE will go over these as I
ask the questions. The important thing is that you feel flee to disagree — no one will see
your answers but me.

Motivation: Likert scale

 

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

 

1= Strongly disagree
2= Disagree

3= Unsure

4= Agree

5= Strongly agree

1. I am interested in reading and learning about <topic x >.

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

 

2. I am interested in doing research on the <topic X> on the Internet.

 

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

3. I am interested in learning about <topic x> from some other sources (e.g., teachers,
parents, fiiends) rather than to read and research on my own (on the scale from 1 to 5)?

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
4. I would like to write about <topic X> for my fourth grade peers.

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

 

 

140

 

 

Appendix I
Topics and Web sites
Weather (rain, thunderstorms, lightening)
http://www.weatherwizkids.com/Rain.htm Flesch-Kincaid: 6.7
http_://www.weatherwizlgids.com/thunderstorm.htm Flesch-Kincaid 6.8

http://www.weatherwizkids.com/lightningl .htm Flesch-Kincaid 6.2

Three government branches: Big6—steps 1 through 4.
httpz/fbensguidengpogovB—5/govemment/branches.html Flesch-Kincaid: 7.5

http://library.thinkquest.org/5873/the.htm Flesch-Kincaid: 7.2

http://www.evgschool.org/three_branches of governmenthtm Flesch-Kincaid: 7.2

Electricity

http://www.aecl .ca/kidszone/atomicenergy/electricitv/indexasp Flesch-Kincaid: 10.0

 

http://www.energyguest.ca.gov/stog/chapterOZ.html Flesch-Kincaid: 7.4
http://www.miamisci.org/af/sln/frenkenstein/safetv.html Interactive game
Constitution

http://www.usconstitutionnet/consfkidsK.html Flesch-Kincaid: 3.8

 

http://bensguide.gpo.gov/3-5/documents/constitution/index.html Flesch-Kincaid: 6.8
http://www.whitehouse.gov/kids/constitution/facts.html Images

(Click on ABC cards and view images and read some facts)

141

Presidents
http://www.earlvamerica.com/gwlifemovie2.htm (Part I: 10 minute movie about the life
of George Washington)

http://www.americaslibrarv.gov/cgibin/page.cgi/aa/presidents/ielferson Flesch-

 

Kincaid:10.3

http://www.americaslibrarv.gov/cgibin/page.cgi/aa/presidents/lincoln Flesch-Kincaid:7.7

Electricity and safety
http://www.epcor.ca/elec safetv_world/hurt/travel_through.html Flesch-Kincaid: 8.9

http://www.safeelectricity.org/esw_vl_l/safe choice/indexhtml Interactive quiz: 6
questions about safe choices (2 points each: 1-5 “Good job”; 6-9 “Great job”, 10-12
“Outstanding job”).

http://www.rp-l.com/electricsafety.htm Flesch-Kincaid: 7.3

Magnets and magnetism

htgrz/lhome.interserv.com/%7Eskyblade/wim.htm F lesch-Kincaid: 5.7
http://home.interserv.com/%7Eslwblade/chargeshtm Flesch-Kincaid: 5.2
http://home.interserv.com/%7Eskvblade/compass.htm Flesch-Kincaid: 4.8

Electrical past and present

http://www.southemcompany.com/leamingpower/timemachine.asp Time machine

(Click on the year)
http://www.southerncompany.com/leamingpower/hoyyplants.asp Interactive site
(How plants work)

http://www.southemcompany.com/leamingpower/energyuse.asp Interactive site
(Click on the appliances to see how much electricity they use)

Circuits

http://www.thetech.org/exhibits/online/topics/1 xb flashhtml F lesch-Kincaid: 8.9

142

http://www.thetech.org/exhibits/online/tonics/ l 2i_flash.html Flesch-Kincaid: 8.8

http://www.thetech.org/exhibits/online/tgics/ 1 2h_flash.html Flesch-Kincaid: 9.1

 

Electrical past and present
http://www.southemcompanv.com/learningpower/timemachineasp Time machine

(Click on the year)

 

http://www.southerncompanv.com/leamingpower/howplants.asp Interactive site

(How plants work)

 

hand/“WW.southemcompanv.com/leamingpower/energvuse.asp Interactive site

(Click on the appliances to see how much electricity they use)

Symbols of the government

littpz/fbensguide.gpogov/3-5/svmbols/eaglehtml F lesch-Kincaid: 9.2
http://bensguidefi.gpo.gov/3-5/svmbols/flag.html Flesch-Kincaid: statistics not reliable
http://bensguide.gpo.gov/k-2/svmbols/ladvlibertv.html Flesch-Kincaid:7.2
Conductors and insulators -
http://www.eDcor.ca/elec safety world/travels/conductors.html Flesch—Kincaid: 9.1
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/kstitesize/science/activities/conductors.shtrnl Interactive
(Online Experiments)

http://www.epcor.ca/elec_safety_world/travels/insulators.html Flesch-Kincaid:10.4
Tornadoes

http://eo.ucar.edu/webweather/tomado2.htm] Flesch-Kincaid: 6.9.

http://l_gids.n_ationalgeographic.com/Games/PuzzlesQuizzes/Brainteasertornado
(Games/Quizzes)

 

11ttp://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/ Flesch-Kincaid: 10.9.

143

 

Appendix J

Semi-structured Questionnaire

1. How would you evaluate your work? Do you think you did what was required

(remember the task definition)? Tell me something about the work you created for the

Fair posters.

 

 

2. Do you think you learned some skill(s) this time that you could use again? Questions

to consider:
° What did I learn how to do that I can use again?

How can I use the skills again?

 

 

3. What do you think you did well this time? (Do you think you selected some important

information? Do you think your peers will understand your piece?)

 

4. Why do you think so?

 

 

5. Would you do anything differently next time?
Question to consider:

° What could I do better next time?

144

 

° What would I do differently next time related to the search for
information?

0 What would I do differently related to the product (a Fair piece)?

 

 

6. Do you think the steps in the Big6 are useful?
Yes/No.

° Why yes? (Or why not?)

 

 

145

Appendix K
True/False Prior Knowledge Questions for Each Topic
Weather

There is always water vapor in the air.

Thunderstorms usually occur in the early mornings.

Lightning and thunderstorms may sound terrible but are not dangerous.
Thunderstorms usually happen in a dry climate.

Water droplets form from cold air.

Branches of the government

The three government branches are three ways to govern the Supreme Court.

Three government branches separate the Founding Fathers of the country from the
Constitution.

The three government branches are the Congress, President and Vice President, and the
Supreme Court.

The three government branches are more powerful than the Constitution.

The three government branches regulate the Constitution of the United States.

Electricity

Electricity is a form of natural gas.

Electricity is a form of crude oil.

Electricity consists of insulators and conductors.
Electricity is something we can always see in the dark.
Electricity is a form of energy.

Constitution

The Constitution regulates the Founding Fathers of America.

The Constitution vetos the laws and bills passed in the U. S. Congress.

The Constitution is the document which establishes the basic principles of the
US. government.

The Constitution is a statement made by the President of the United States.
The Constitution is a form of government.

Conductors and Insulators
Electricity flows through any kind of material easily.

A conductor is material that electricity can flow through easily.
An insulator is a material that attracts electricity.

146

 

Water is not a good conductor.
Metal is not a good conductor.
Presidents

The second president of the US was Benjamin Franklin
The first president of the US was Abraham Lincoln.

The first president of the US was Thomas Jefferson.

The first president of the US was George Washington.
The second president of the US was Theodore Roosevelt.

Electrical Safety

Electricity flows through water easily.

Electricity does not flow through water, only through electrical wires.
Electricity cannot flow through your body.

Electricity can flow through your body but will not hurt you.
Electricity cannot kill you.

The Bill of Rights

The Bill of Rights is a short document that describes the House of Representatives and
the Senate.

The Bill of Rights are the first ten amendments to the Constitution.

The Bill of Rights states what the President of the United States has to do in the
government.

The Bill of Rights is meant to limit some rights stated in the Constitution.

Electrical Past and present

Electricity is everywhere so there is no need to worry about conservation.
TV does not use electricity.

We can turn a light off and save energy.

Energy is not renewable.

All energy is renewable.

Magnets

Two negative magnets attract.

Two positive magnets attract.

The Earth pulls positively charged things like protons toward the North pole.
The Earth and the Sun are magnetic.

The Earth pulls negatively charged things like electrons toward the South pole.

Symbols of the government

There is only one symbol of the government: the golden eagle.

147

There is only one symbol of the government: the flag of the Unite States.
There is only one symbol of the government: the Statue of Liberty.

There are many symbols of the government but people have different opinions
about which are the true symbols.

There are several symbols of the government and the bald eagle is one of them.

Circuits

Electricity does not travel along a path called a circuit.

Electricity never follows a path because it does not know when we will switch the light
on.

When we turn on the light, the electrons are steady and do not move.

We may have a series of circuits, like batteries in a flashlight.

We cannot turn on two lights at the same time.

Tornadoes

Tornadoes are caused by heavy rains.

Scientists know everything we need to know about tornadoes.
A tornado is a rotating column of air.

Tornadoes are caused by blizzards.

Tornadoes occur everywhere in the world equally.

148

 

 

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