Abstract

As the Internet becomes a resource in the classroom, students must learn to glean maximally from that information using skills that enhance their understandings. Students engage in activities involved with Internet searching to the degree that they are skilled and motivated. This article reports on a research study that demonstrates that the model of self-regulated learning developed by Corno and Mandinach relative to traditional classroom activities can be applied to Internet searching behaviors. The study also found that not all Internet searchers are equal; thus, the article suggests that students need to be helped to become better at it, and the article also suggests ways this might be accomplished, which are linked to the findings and research on selfregulated learning in general. In particular, it gives curricular and instructional recommendations for accomplishing and supporting student learning in both Internet searches and regulation of their own searching behaviors. Two university students, Allison and Ashley, are observed searching the Internet for information to answer a series of questions regarding Mark Twain. Both students average about 5.5 hours a week searching the Internet for academic information and neither student is an English or a literature major. Both are trying to determine what hypothetical political platform would be part of a campaign if Twain were to run for U.S. president in 2004. Each student uses widely different search techniques. Allison begins with a keyword search using ''Twain'' and ''politics'' and reads each search screen from top to bottom, carefully selecting links she finds appropriate matches for her purposes. Ashley has multiple screens open after searching with two search engines on the same keywords, first ''Twain'' and ''presidency'' and then ''Twain'' and ''political actions.'' Ashley then selects those Web sites that appear in both lists. Both students find information they feel is appropriate to the task. Allison takes hand notes while Ashley bounces between the word processor and open Web pages, cutting and pasting information and adding an outline structure to those notes. Ashley refers to these notes and checks for completeness with the assigned tasks. Allison checks the screens with the assigned tasks. Are these observations indicative of the processes and strategies in selfregulated learning (SRL)? If so, what do they inform us, as educators, about the application of SRL principles (found in traditional classroom tasks) within the context of Internet searching? Today's classrooms are highly affected by Vannevar Bush's vision of natural information systems linking ideas by association within a Weblike environment. A truly global electronic environment now exists for educational information resources, enhanced by hypermedia. Now, classroom activities, once relying on printed media as the major source of information, use Webbased materials as well. Students need to transition skills, habits, and strategies acquired in print-centered environments to new electronic formats, and teachers need to adjust instructional components to scaffold such transitions. The processes and strategies for learning that are employed by active, resourceful, self-motivated students to work toward educational goals have been studied in traditional classroom environments as self-regulation. Selfregulation models, specifically the one developed by