The ability to search the Internet for information is perhaps one of the most important life skills for the twenty-first century. This review argues that there have been three broad areas of research focus on these skills since the World Wide Web was launched: interaction processes, search completion outcomes, and dialogic criticality

1. How should we judge the quality of students’ Internet
search activity? A review of research, 2000-2019.
Colin Harrison
Emeritus Professor of Literacy Studies in Education, University of Nottingham
colin.harrison@nottingham.ac.uk

2. ‘Pedagogy is the driver;
Technology is the accelerator.’
Michael Fullan (2013)

3. Pedagogy is the driver
Technology is the accelerator
Michael Fullan (2013)

4. Navigating for information in a
post-typographical world
The British
Library:
25,000,000
books

5. Navigating for information in a
post-typographical world
The Internet:
60,000,000,000 pages:
<worldwidewebsize.com, 12 Nov 2019>
‘A room with sixty
billion doors’

6. But in fact, the Internet:
- is largely unedited
- contains willfully misleading
information (Heart of Texas, 2016)
- Google: paid content gets 65% of
clicks; unpaid content only 35%
- 76% of all websites send tracker
data via cookies to Google
- 95% of web searches end on p. 1
We hoped that the 1.7 billion
websites accessed over the Internet
would be a liberating, safe, open
and authoritative learning
environment

7. If we want to support students in becoming skilled
and effective users of the Internet, how should we
judge the quality of their search activity?
Searched <Internet “search behaviour”>: 25,600 results, from
Hölscher C, Strube G. Web search behavior of Internet experts
and newbies. Computer networks. 2000 Jun 1;33(1-6):337-46.
to

8. Research themes 1995-2019

9. Research themes 1995-2005

10. Research themes 1995-2005

11. Research themes 2005-2010

12. Research themes 2010-2019