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Open and guided searching

This page is not about searching techniques.

For a detailed explanation about searching on the World Wide Web, you can visit Michael Shade's (Michael is a member of the WELL Project) own pages (http://www.bus.bton.ac.uk/Staff/Shade/well1/searching.html).

You will find very clear explanations about:

  • Directories
  • Search engines
  • Meta-engines
  • Searching techniques
  • How to refine your search
and plenty of very useful tips in order to find what you are really looking for on the Web.

And when you have found relevant links, you might want to create your own index of resources, adapted to your own needs and those of your students. This is what we are going to look at here.

Looking for resources:

Discovering the Web and the wealth of information freely (but not always 'free-of-charge') available, looking for specific resources and actually finding them is always, at least initially, an exciting adventure. 'Surfing' is often the favourite activity in a Web-supported learning environment!

In the context of a properly described activity, with clearly defined objectives, asking learners to seek, filter and 'digest' relevant information, and share their findings with the rest of the group can be extremely motivational. It certainly goes a long way towards a constructivist approach to education, which has been shown to lead to more autonomy and ownership of the learning process.

Creating an index of resources:

Learners need not be left to their own devices to find Web-based learning resources. It would be too much like asking them to go to a library and educate themselves. Teachers can intervene at some appropriate stages of the information-seeking process in order to help learners refine their search, and guide them through the maze of cyberspace, reducing by so much the risk of information overload (and a possible - and normal - sense of frustration).

For example, a simple 'Welcome to this Activity' WebPage - possibly attached to course specifications - can help learners make a start, if not in the right direction, at least in 'a' direction - the one chosen by the teacher. The teacher can include a description of the activity - be it 100% Web-based or only partly Web-supported - to be performed by learners. Instructions of the 'how to...' category can be given, as well as a list of suggested starting points in cyberspace.

The Web is full of places offering short and easily useable indexes on selected topics. Sometimes, it is more productive to advise learners to concentrate on a few selected quality sites than letting them being swallowed by the 150,348 (if not millions!) answers of a search engine... Although Web surfing may be fun, getting lost in cyberspace cannot be very 'educational'.

Links selected by teachers should, as much as possible, be accompanied by a short description of location (URL, country of origin if known), contents and possible use. As WebSites may contain several dozens pages (or several hundreds sometimes!), it may be useful to link to the front page of each site as well as some more relevant pages.

Let us not forget that the 'Welcome to this Activity' WebPage should be as alive as possible. The Web is not a static environment. It allows easy updating, adding, changing. Maintenance of the links by teachers is a key element for successful use of the index. Also, teachers should allow - and even encourage - learners to contribute to the development of the index by submitting addresses of sites they have found 'good' - or, maybe, even better than the ones listed by the teacher!

An example of activity with indexed WebSites:

The ©Cyberscope Treasure Hunt (http://www.tees.ac.uk/langc/lancent/thunt.html), developed at the University of Teesside - and also available in a shorter version on the WELL WebSite (http://www.well.ac.uk/wellproj/workshp1/treasure.htm) - is an example of what can easily be designed on the Web.

The basic principle of the ©Cyberscope Treasure Hunt is to guide users into a certain area of cyberspace by offering them links to selected WebSites, as part of a 'story' imagined by the designer. The story offers the context, the links to WebSites the branches of the miniature learning Web thus created.

Participants in this on-line activity are asked to 'collect' answers to questions related to each WebSite visited. All answers are then entered in an (on-line) interactive questionnaire that instantaneously gives feedback on the answers. Answers can also be sent (by email) to the teacher for deferred analysis.

'Guided' versus 'open':

'Guided' searching activities presents obvious advantages, including:

  • learners are spared the 'looking for' stage, which can often be time-consuming,
  • teachers can more easily include the searching activity in a defined learning context,
  • resources accessed by learners are known by teachers and limited, allowing on-line manipulation and the design of related exercises.

However, the benefits of 'Open' searching activities should not be ignored:

  • finding relevant information is an extremely important skill to develop,
  • learning to select resources (and 'digest' their content) is also paramount in the information overload of the Information Society,
  • discovering - and sharing with others - some cyber-gems is quite an exciting - and motivational - experience for learners.

Last updated 22nd October 1999
Author: Eric Bel