• Project state

  Ongoing

• Type of project

  Competitive project

• Begin date

  01 March 2024

• End date

  30 June 2027

In a digitalized world, Online Search (OS) competences represent a key element of Information Literacy (IL), which is widely recognized as foundational for active citizenship in today’s democratic and interconnected societies, and is integrated in many Western school curricula. Nonetheless, little is known about how different learners actually search online and develop OS competences. The situation is made even more complex when we consider the dramatic speed of technological change and the vast amount of information available online, along with the threat of misinformation or deliberate disinformation. The LOIS project (FNS grant 100019_188967; https://data.snf.ch/grants/grant/188967) developed an innovative approach to capture online search behaviors related to specific information search tasks. It was able to collect and analyze over 700 “search stories” from young people between 16 and 20 years of age. The results suggested that there are many different online search styles and that some users are able to adapt their search style to the task and/or situation. Such findings support the idea that a one-size-fits-all approach to IL and in particular OS education – as it is currently practiced – is not appropriate as students have different entry skills and show heterogeneous, more or less successful, search styles. The ROSE project leverages LOIS findings and technologies to develop and test an innovative teaching approach for Reflective Online Search Education (hence the acronym ROSE) in secondary education. The pivotal idea is to empower learners through appropriate formative feedback that fosters reflection and the development of both basic and self-regulatory skills. Thanks to a web-based platform, accompanied by original teacher support and class materials, ROSE will implement three formative feedback modes: search process visualization, informed teacher and peer feedback, and adaptive system recommendations. The project is articulated in three phases: (1) a collaborative design phase to develop the ROSE teaching approach and its online tools; (2) a quasi-experimental phase to evaluate the effectiveness of ROSE for students’ learning; and (3) a mixed-method phase to investigate teachers’ adoption and integration of ROSE in their teaching practices. Thanks to an innovative technology-based solution, ROSE will test the educational implications of LOIS and potentially open up new paths in exploring both the learning (cognitive, motivational) and teaching (didactic) sides of IL. We expect ROSE to generate new insights both in IL competences development and IL education, and to allow a progressive refinement of the search story method both for data collection and analysis. Its mixed-method research phase will provide evidence on the implementation, transferability and acceptance of the new instructional approaches and related (digital) tools. The ROSE project will also produce a set of high-quality research-inspired and evidence-based instructional materials, including the ROSE online platform, teacher training materials, class materials and a set of case studies. We expect that these outputs will be successfully disseminated in Switzerland and Germany, and that they will have an impact in enhancing the overall quality of IL instruction in secondary education, thus better fulfilling the requirements of new school curricula and of societal demands.