How Does Students' Knowledge about Information-Seeking Improve Their Behavior in Solving Information Problems?

Background/purpose: This study investigates how the teaching intervention and familiarity with the search topic enhance Greek students' behaviour while solving information problems. Materials/methods: Seven university students solved three information problems on the same search topic during an academic semester. After the first and before the last two information problems, a didactic intervention was implemented to familiarize the undergraduate students with the information problem-solving process based on the Big6 model of Eisenberg & Berkowitz (1990) and the use of essential online search tools. Qualitative data was collected via observation as well with the think-aloud protocol. Results: The results indicated that after the didactic intervention and familiarity with the search topic, the participants could realize a greater variety of actions to locate the required information. Conclusion: The findings deepen the comprehension of how the students' information behaviours evolve and indicate suitable interventions that could support students in performing effective internet searches.