Effects of a modelling example for teaching information problem solving skills

Although students often appear to be skilled in retrieving and making use of information from the internet, research shows that their information problem solving skills are overestimated. They show deficiencies in many of the necessary skills, such as generation of search terms, selection of sources, and critical processing of information. It is therefore necessary to design and develop effective instruction to foster information problem solving skills. Research shows that learning from examples can be an effective approach for teaching complex cognitive skills in ill-structured domains, such as writing or communicating. To explore whether this also holds for information problem solving, this study investigates the effects of presenting a modelling example in an online information problem solving training. Results of two experiments show that viewing a modelling example, presented as a screencast of an expert thinking out loud and interspersed with cognitive prompts, leads to a higher posttest performance than performing a practice task. The effect persisted on a delayed posttest 1 week later. The results imply that information problem solving instruction in an online setting can benefit from employing video-based modelling examples.