Improving Student Information Search: A Metacognitive Approach

Metacognition is a set of active mental processes that allows users to monitor, regulate, and direct their personal cognitive strategies. Improving Student Information Search traces the impact of a tutorial on education graduate students’ problem-solving in online research databases. The tutorial centres on idea tactics developed by Bates that represent metacognitive strategies designed to improve information search outcomes. The first half of the book explores the role of metacognition in problem-solving, especially for education graduate students. It also discusses the use of metacognitive scaffolds for improving students’ problem-solving. The second half of the book presents the mixed method study, including the development of the tutorial, its impact on seven graduate students’ search behaviour and outcomes, and suggestions for adapting the tutorial for other users.

• provides metacognitive strategies to improve students’ information search outcomes
• incorporates tips to enhance database search skills in digital libraries
• includes seminal studies on information behaviour

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. Information research and the search process
Chapter 3. Research on metacognition
Chapter 4. Problem solving and metacognition
Chapter 5. Information problem solving and metacognitive skills
Chapter 6. Education graduate students’ information-seeking skills
Chapter 7. Education students’ information seeking to support problem solving
Chapter 8. Metacognitive skills and online search behavior
Chapter 9. Promoting metacognition
Chapter 10. The metacognitive scaffold: the idea tactics tutorial
Chapter 11. Methodology: the think-aloud problem-solving activity and post-activity interview
Chapter 12. Methodology: the data analysis
Chapter 13. The indexes
Chapter 14. Overall effect of tutorial on search outcomes
Chapter 15. The tutorial and idea generation and mental pattern breaking
Chapter 16. The impact of the tutorial on participants’ metacognitive behaviors in problem solving
Chapter 17. Metacognition and information literacy
Chapter 18. Utilizing the tutorial
Chapter 19. Conclusion and recommendations for future studies

Appendix A: Search ratings
Appendix B: Scatter plot diagrams and bar graphs