Collaborative Online Inquiry: Exploring Students' Skills in Locating, Reading, and Communicating Information
This study examines third, fourth, and fifth grade students' reasoning that was captured as they engaged collaboratively in a teacher designed inquiry task. This task focused on choosing ecofriendly toys for a fictitious local toy store. Results indicated that students were more expressive with reasoning when they shared their ideas orally, but were less apt to include reasoning in their digital writing. This pattern of results suggests the benefits of pairing talk with writing, grouping students to work collaboratively during online inquiry, and teaching ways to construct digital writing that supports the inclusion of hyperlinks, the integration of images, and other means of connecting digital reading and writing. These digital affordances provide tangible ways for students to include reasoning and evidence within their writing and can bolster their persuasive and argument writing. Recommendations for instruction are offered as well as design considerations for online inquiry tasks. Ms. Jackson pairs students together for online inquiry, an instructional practice where students investigate a topic of interest to them online aided by teacher and peer support. She provides targeted guidance to improve the quality of their collaboration. She encourages Bridget and Jacey to each share their thinking aloud before writing their ideas down in an email. This process of rehearsal enhances productive collaboration and promotes more detailed reasoning. Ms. Jackson's prompts help her students reflect and encourage higher level thinking in the moment. "I like reading online and writing with you, Jacey, we talk about what we find on the websites together and it helps me decide what to put into the email," Bridget shared. "I like working with you too, Jacey," Bridget replies. "You remind me about adding links in the email to what we read online so we can explain our reasons." Ms. Jackson supports her students' emerging digital literacy skills by providing opportunities for the students to explore online content. From the days of Oregon Trail and the first WebQuests, teachers like Ms. Jackson have worked to use technology to encourage curiosity and exploration that seeks to engage students in productive dialogue as they explore online topics of interest to them. Teachers have long used the inquiry process one where students develop questions and explore several kinds of resources to find answers as a method for engaging elementary aged learners. Drawing on our experiences designing inquiry tasks (Sekeres, Coiro, Castek, Guzniczak, 2014) and analyzing students' dialogue (Coiro, Sekeres, Castek, Guzniczak, 2014) this article demonstrates how structured online inquiry, together Journal of Interactive Online Learning Sekeres and Castek 59 with peer collaboration, can be used to bolster students' digital literacies. In this article, we first introduce how third, fourth, and fifth grade students engaged in reading, reasoning, and collaborative online writing. Next, we show ways that students made use of digital affordances to enhance their reasoning. Finally, we make recommendations for instruction that supports collaboration and builds students' emerging digital literacy skills. Increasing Digital Access in Schools As schools' access to hardware and the Internet have improved, educators are faced with the challenge of designing learning experiences that expand students' access to the online world in ways that help them build a set of flexible skills and strategies. Engaging students in online inquiry, and scaffolding their attempts to navigate and make sense of the online world, is a promising instructional practice for achieving these aims (Dobler Eagleton, 2015; Sekeres, et al. 2014) Current research shows that: 77% of teachers indicate that use of digital devices enhances motivation for learning (EdTech, 2013) 76% find that they help to address diverse learning styles (EdTech, 2013) 58% percent of middle school students and 42% of high school students report using tablets regularly in their classrooms (Pearson, 2013) Computers have become more available, but are students prepared to use them? Despite the increasing availability of computers and Internet connections in schools, and the pressure on teachers to use them, students' digital literacies are not assessed (Castek Coiro, 2015) and are, thus, often inaccurately estimated. In the absence of assessment tools to determine students' digital literacy skills, some educators believe that students' have more advanced skills than they actually possess, which can lead to teachers requiring students to accomplish tasks that are not yet within their control. Other teachers may be reluctant to provide class time for Internet exploration out of fear that the time spent reading online can be frustrating to students who have underdeveloped searching skills (Henry, 2006) We have found that when opportunities to engage students in online inquiry are carefully designed, the results can be instructive for students and informative for the teacher as well. For example, inquiry tasks can be designed with built in scaffolding teachers can implement to implement to enhance the study of curricular topics. The use of a customized search engine for narrowing down the website choices students encounter as well as offering email starters for writing are both tangible ways to support students as they engage in online inquiry. In the sections that follow, we discuss how structured online inquiry, together with peer collaboration, were used to bolster students' digital literacies and provide a useful means of investigating curriculum related topics. Moreover, we discuss how observing students while they engage in inquiry activities can yield valuable information about their online reading and writing. The support teachers provide through prompts can encourage higher level thinking in the moment and serve to further develop students' digital skills so they can be used flexibly. Study Design To examine what occurred when students worked in pairs to read and write online, we structured an online inquiry task (Alberta Learning, 2004) for third, fourth, and fifth graders during which they examined background information for the task, searched for new information, and composed an email sharing the results of their inquiry. More specifically, they were asked to Journal of Interactive Online Learning Sekeres and Castek 60 work in pairs to find and recommend toys for an environmentally friendly, though fictitious, Green Toys Shop. They emailed their findings and reasons for their choices to a fictitious manager in order to persuade her to offer these toys for sale in the shop. This study was designed specifically to generate observable data in the form of screen capture and audio streams that allowed us to examine online reading, digital writing, and collaboration. Participants. The students who volunteered to participate in the study were 16 pairs of third, fourth, and fifth graders who attended a magnet elementary school in a mid sized southeastern city. The school taught an International Baccalaureate curriculum; thus, researchers designed the inquiry task to dovetail with students' thematic studies that included environmental topics. The task implicitly asked students to examine environmentally friendly toy manufacturing materials, processes, and products. Researchers from different universities around the country chose to study upper elementary students in order to extend previous research about social and cognitive interactions and the role of collaborative dialogue in completing online inquiry tasks. The original research was completed with 7 grade students (Castek, Coiro, Guzniczak, Bradshaw, 2012; Coiro, Castek, Guzniczak, 2011; Coiro, Castek, Guzniczak, Bradshaw, 2011) The elementary students in this study were able readers. Reading on grade level was one condition of their attending the International Baccalaureate school where the study took place and was also a condition for participation in the study. Within this study, there were near equal numbers of boys and girls who were both white and African American. None of the students were English language learners. Each of the children had varying degrees of experience working with other students to complete online tasks and their experience working on computers in the online environment also varied (although none had any hesitancy approaching the task) Since collaboration in pairs was a design feature, the researchers asked teachers to pair the students purposefully (e.g. students who worked well together) prior to their arrival at the computer lab. Pairings were mixed between gender and race. The inquiry took place across two sessions lasting about 30 minutes on different days, but within the same week. Task design. Researchers prepared a customized search engine populated with websites that included a variety of webpages that featured information on the environment, toy manufacturing, and "green" toys. The sites were not specifically written for children; about 70 web sites were included. Researchers prepared a task description and directions that explained what students would do within the two sessions. First, dyads were asked to read and think aloud while they navigated the introduction page with several embedded links that familiarized them with environmentally friendly manufacturing materials and processes. Then, these student pairs were asked to find environmentally friendly toys to sell in the shop. Finally, they were asked to report their choices and explain their reasoning in an email to the shop manager. The researchers provided examples of email starters the students could use or they could construct their own way of expressing their ideas. We report the results of closely observing the students' dialogue, focusing on both social and cognitive interaction during their background reading and subsequent online sear