Search engines are considered the primary tool to assist and empower learners in finding information relevant to their learning goals-be it learning something new, improving their existing skills, or just fulfilling a curiosity. While several approaches for improving search engines for the learning scenario have been proposed, instructional scaffolding has not been studied in the context of search as learning, despite being shown to be effective for improving learning in both digital and traditional learning contexts. When scaffolding is employed, instructors provide learners with support throughout their autonomous learning process. We hypothesize that the usage of scaffolding techniques within a search system can be an effective way to help learners achieve their learning objectives whilst searching. As such, this paper investigates the incorporation of scaffolding into a search system employing three different strategies (as well as a control condition): (I) AQE_{SC}, the automatic expansion of user queries with relevant subtopics; (ii) CURATED_{SC}, the presenting of a manually curated static list of relevant subtopics on the search engine result page; and (iii) FEEDBACK_{SC}, which projects real-time feedback about a user's exploration of the topic space on top of the CURATED_{SC} visualization. To investigate the effectiveness of these approaches with respect to human learning, we conduct a user study (N=126) where participants were tasked with searching and learning about topics such as `genetically modified organisms'. We find that (I) the introduction of the proposed scaffolding methods does not significantly improve learning gains. However, (ii) it does significantly impact search behavior. Furthermore, (iii) immediate feedback of the participants' learning leads to undesirable user behavior, with participants focusing on the feedback gauges instead of learning.
翻译:搜索引擎被认为是帮助和增强学习者发现与其学习目标有关的信息的主要工具,它可以学习一些新东西,提高现有技能,或者只是好奇心而已。虽然提出了几种改进学习情景搜索引擎的方法,但是没有在搜索过程中将教学脚架作为学习研究,尽管在数字和传统学习背景下显示对改进学习是有效的。在使用脚架时,教官在整个自主学习过程中向学习者提供支持。我们假设,在搜索系统中使用脚架技术可以成为帮助学习者在搜索过程中实现学习目标的有效方法。因此,本文调查了将脚架纳入搜索系统的做法,使用了三种不同的战略(以及控制条件):(I) AQE ⁇ SC},用户询问的自动扩展了相关子专题的学习;(ii) CURTECC},在搜索引擎页面上展示了手动的固定相关小主题清单;以及(iii) FEEDBACK_SC},我们用实时搜索工具进行实时反馈,我们用这些用户的学习方式来深入学习用户的学习。