Web page design as a tool for cognitive and metacognitive development in ninth-grade global studies
Abstract
This study explored the cognitive and metacognitive strategies that 9th-grade students used to design and develop pages for the World Wide Web. The study also examined the factors that influenced the cognitive and metacognitive strategies that these students used to design and develop pages for the World Wide Web. Ten volunteers from the investigator's Global Studies Honors course participated in study. These students were given the task of designing a Web page on a Global Studies topic. The Web page needed to include but was not limited to information on the given topic, links to Web sites on the topic, an evaluation of a primary source document, and review questions. The research was conducted in a natural classroom setting by the teacher-researcher who used participant observation, a prior knowledge survey, student journals, interviews, and student presentations to replicate data from different sources. The data were collected over 10 40-minute class sessions. Data analysis was based on a hypotheses-generating model. Therefore, data analysis began during the data collection process as the investigator compared incidents and generated tentative categories. The teacher-researcher then retested the categories against additional data until final categories were developed and hypotheses were generated. The findings of this study strongly suggest that 9th-grade students use cognitive and metacognitive strategies to design and construct pages for the World Wide Web. The cognitive strategies that these students used included searching, Web referencing, synthesizing, and evaluating. The metacognitive strategies that these students used included planning and problem solving. The findings also suggest that the cognitive and metacognitive strategies that these students used were influenced by the following factors: prior knowledge, authentic audience, collaboration, and learning styles. Based on these finding three hypotheses were generated: (a) Web page design builds cognitive thinking skills, (b) Web page design requires that students reflect on their own learning as it builds metacognitive awareness, and (c) Web page design improves students' ability to think about global perspectives as they gain more in-depth knowledge of historical topics.
Subject Area
Curriculum development|Educational technology
Recommended Citation
McDuffie, Regina Marie, "Web page design as a tool for cognitive and metacognitive development in ninth-grade global studies" (2003). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI3084913.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI3084913
