Successfully Promoting 21st Century Online Research Skills: Interventions in 5th-Grade Classrooms.

The 21st Century skills and strategies needed to read and do research online are multifaceted, and require sophisticated and complex application in online environments (Afflerbach & Cho, 2009; Leu, Kinzer, Coiro, Castek, & Henry, 2013). Informational communication technologies present additional complexities because they are deictic, or continually changing, and require teachers to reassess what it even means to be literate (Leu, 2000, p. 745). Despite the fact that online literacy skills are deictic, our educational systems are slow to change practice to meet the needs of today's learners. In fact, few studies exist on the effects of teaching online research skills in classroom settings.Twenty-first Century literacy skills were not "invented" with the Internet; competent readers use many of the same offline text strategies as those they use with online texts (Coiro & Dobler, 2007). However, digital literacy has made the standards for literacy broader, often requiring higher levels of thinking and problem solving skills than are associated with traditional print (Castek, 2008; Coiro, 2009; Eagleton & Guinee, 2002; Kuiper, Volman, & Terwel, 2008). With online texts, students need new sources of prior knowledge, higher levels of inferential reasoning, and advanced, self-regulated, navigation strategies (Afflerbach & Cho, 2009; Coiro & Dobler, 2007). The complex space of the Internet requires flexible and strategic application of skills that enable readers to negotiate the constantly changing landscape of a hypertext reading environment (Cho, 2014). Internet-based reading requires learners to use self-regulatory strategies that include locating, critically evaluating, and synthesizing information from a multiplicity of sources, a complex process including monitoring and self-explanation when done by better learners (Goldman, 2012; Goldman, Braasch, Wiley, Graesser, & Brodowinska, 2012). This process has been termed "realizing and processing potential texts" by Cho and Afflerbach (2015, p. 500) because of the many choices readers must make in hyperlinked environments, the metacognitive strategies they must enact, and the texts that are constructed as a results of these strategic decisions and actions.Readers who struggle with offline texts show these same patterns with online texts where the strategic and flexible application of strategies for constructing intertextual meaning is required. In online contexts, less skilled readers showed greater difficulty in appropriately and effectively applying strategies needed for comprehension, searching for task-relevant information and images, determining the relevance of information, making decisions about the credibility of information, and acting on those decisions (Chen, 2009; Cho, 2014; Dee-Lucas, 1999; Goldman, Braasch, et al., 2012; Lawless & Kulikowich, 1996; Pei-Lan, Lin, & Chuen-Tsai, 2013; Wilder & Dressman, 2006). Curriculum reform initiatives are also changing the shape and nature of 21st century learning and assessment. The Common Core State Standards (CCSS), a noteworthy educational reform, showcases an increased focus on literacy, information and communication technologies, and the use of increasingly complex expository text, including Internet text (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices [NGA Center] & The Council of Chief State School Officers [CCSSO], 2010). In fact, the CCSS calls for expository text to account for 50% of total instruction by fourth grade, recognizing that most of our knowledge base as adults stems from informational text. Neglecting the use of expository, Internet-based text in classrooms is a cause for concern, which is perpetuated simultaneously by the limiting view that technology is merely a supplement to the curriculum, teachers' inexperience in incorporating authentic online materials in their lessons, and insufficient classroom curriculum materials that direct learning through online resources (Dreher & Zelinke, 2010; Hutchison & Reinking, 2011). …