Promoting Digital Skills and Critical Awareness through Online Search and Personal Knowledge Management: A Case Study - 2nd International Workshop on Evidence-Based Technology Enhanced Learning - page 12

engines and web di-rectories; 3. evaluate what they find on the web; 4. create their
own PLE; 5. make an effective use of resources found on the web.
Different tools of assessment were used: 1. user questionnaires (the survey on
metacognition, motivation and ICT which was administered twice: before and af-
ter the course; intermediate and final tests on acquired knowledge); 2. analysis of
digital tasks (coursework tasks and final project work); 3. secondary data gather-
ing and analysis (feedback on the course; interview with the teacher).
3.2 Digital Tasks
During the course different tasks were assigned to be performed either during the
lessons (in the wifi area of the university) or at home (coursework tasks).
During the lessons students were asked to brainstorm and choose efficient, suit-
able search terms; create a tag cloud with the results of the brainstorming; categor-
ize the search terms and create a mind map of the search; answer a short search
quiz; analyse the web results and evaluate the credibility of websites. The course-
work tasks included the following: create a personalized search engine using
Google CSE; search on YouTube creative videos on arts or videoart, tag them, and
prepare an oral or digital presentation about them; search on iTunes audio or video
podcasts on a specific topic and prepare a presentation; search on Twitter what
people are saying about a specific topic, categorize the results (in keywords) and
create a tag cloud using Wordle; create a Facebook page or a Facebook Group on
a positive social or cultural initiative and add ideas to promote the group or the
page; using delicious, collect bookmarks concerning websites on a specific topic,
like leadership, and prepare a 2-minute oral presentation on the results.
For the final assessment students were asked to prepare - in group of 2-3
people - a multimedia piece of work (a powerpoint presentation, a short video,
photo presentation, website, a wiki, a poster, a chart, a sound file, etc.) choosing
among one of these three tasks: My digital identity , i.we a presentation on their da-
ta on the web and on the way to manage their online reputation; PLE description
and design , a description of the web technologies used for personal and academic
purposes; Spreading good news. Internet branding for no profit initiatives , i. e. the
application of corporate branding techniques that could help make a small no-
profit initiative more popular on the web.
4 Some Results
4.1 Metacognition, Motivation and ICT Use
In [10] the detailed description of data gathering and analysis is presented and dis-
cussed; here we summarise some of the main findings. The user questionnaire
consisted of three parts: 1. Learning strategies; 2. Motivational variables and
learning outcomes; 3. ICT use for learning. Our aim was to analyse the relation-
ships between learning strategies and motivation and the use of ICTs.