Unravelling Secondary Students’ Challenges in Digital Literacy: a Gender Perspective

Abstract

The use of the Internet to learn involves complex cognitive activities. Educational researchers claim more attention in studying the nature of students’ challenges when using digital information for learning purposes. Our research investigated in depth the challenges that secondary students face when solving web information-problem tasks. We thoroughly analysed how forty secondary students (18 girls and 22 boys) solved a scholar task using web information. The students’ actions on the computer screen were logged. Findings showed specific difficulties in solving digital tasks due to when (1) typing appropriate search terms, and when (2) selecting reliable and useful results from a “search engine results page”, which hinders the correct finding and understanding of web information needed to solve the digital task. In addition, the participants had a lack of reflection regarding the different actions to solve the digital task. Furthermore, our findings revealed that gender was not associated with differences in digital attainment.