Visualizing Online Search Processes for Information Literacy Education #ECIL2023

The final presentation I (Sheila) will be blogging from this morning was Visualizing Online Search Processes for Information Literacy Education was presented by Luca Botturi – a presentation co-authored with Loredana Addimando, Martin Hermida and Chiara Beretta. Botturi talked about their project LOIS which had 500+ school student participants. The students were presented with scenarios, for example one where a friend is worried about eating pesto because they have heard basil causes cancer. The researchers asked participants to share their search logs, as well as recording their thoughts about the success of the search.
The researchers used visual methods so they could inspect the research stories and also because they could be useful for teaching information literacy. The visualisation includes notation for length of time doing different actions, what the actions are such as reading, searching, searching for the same word, clicking on a hit. The visualisations show that some people search for the same word again and again, others a different word each time, some spend a long time reading and never click on a hit: so the stories for the same scenario can be very different. However, in broad terms, 40% just type in a question, tinker with it, find an answer and select it. They are displayed in such a way that you can work through each search story seeing what is done.
Once the students have done these searches, they are asked to reflect on what they’ve done and they can see what others have done. The students were very satisfied with this activity: the the students with higher academic performance and those who found searching easy rated the activity higher. Concerning were those students who identified that they had learned more about searching but didn’t intend to change their behaviour.
- The researchers identified five guidelines
- There is no best online search method
- Everyone has one or two preferred search practices
- A poor search can be worse than no search
- Search tasks matter and are not all alike
- Effective online searching takes learning 

They will be sharing the plugin and the server application that they developed. The next step for them is Reflective Online Search Education (ROSE) currently starting within FNS/Weave programme with the Leibniz Institut, Germany. This will develop ways of using this search story approach, which sounds very interesting.
Photo by Sheila Webber: Art garden, Krakow