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Guiding Independence: Developing a Research Tool to Support Student Decision Making in Selecting Online Information Sources
Author(s) -
Baildon Rindi,
Baildon Mark
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
the reading teacher
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.642
H-Index - 50
eISSN - 1936-2714
pISSN - 0034-0561
DOI - 10.1598/rt.61.8.5
Subject(s) - readability , trustworthiness , psychology , independence (probability theory) , resource (disambiguation) , mathematics education , medical education , social psychology , computer science , medicine , computer network , statistics , mathematics , programming language
The development and use of a research tool to guide fourth‐grade students' use of information sources during a research project is described in this article. Over a period of five weeks, 21 fourth‐grade students in an international school in Singapore participated in a study investigating the extent to which the use of a “research resource guide” improved their independence in the research process. Findings indicate that students became more independent as a result of their use of the research guide. Students demonstrated greater consideration of a source's readability, trustworthiness, and usefulness when deciding whether to use it. The authors describe approaches to support students in making determinations about the readability, trustworthiness, and usefulness of sources of information.