# Extracting Searching as Learning Tasks Based on IBRT Approach
## 3 Data and Methods
### Data Collection and Analysis
#### 3.2.2 SAL Learning Style Analysis  
To extract tasks in SAL, we must be able to identify the learning styles. However, asking a learner about their learning style is not feasible in most cases. We believe that learning styles can be deduced by examining the learning activities. Therefore, we manually analyzed the learning activities of the students on UWP course. During our analysis, we observed two distinct learning styles. Figure 0(a),b are two representative examples of SAL learning style from the dataset we collected.  
Figure 0(a) presents an example in which the student is learning to complete the first-week assignment. The student first issued a query \"file open picker\". Combined with the click-on events and the context in the UWP website, we find that the query can be mapped to the UWP class \"FileOpenPicker\". The second query \"FileSavePicker\" and the third query \"FolderPicker\" are the names of two classes in the UWP API. Through analysis, we found that \"FileOpenPicker\", \"FileSavePicker\", and \"FolderPicker\" are all classes under the namespace \"Windows.Storage.Pickers\". Therefore, it is evident that the student was learning following the knowledge network on Microsoft's official UWP API reference. In addition, we believe that these searching activities belong to a common task (learning how to open a file for programming the media player).  
Figure 0(a): Examples of SAL learning styles ((**a**) an example of the first learning style, (**b**) an example of the second learning style).  
Figure 1b shows another learning style. During the SAL process, the student issued five queries following the time sequence. Combined with context on the Microsoft UWP website, we find that these learning events fall into three main learning tasks (the first and the second query belong to the first learning task, the second query and the third query belong to the second learning task, and the fourth query belongs to the third learning task). The analysis of the programming snapshots validated the deduction that the student completed three functions for the first-week assignment during this part of the learning process. Obviously, the student's learning path did not follow the knowledge network of the UWP API reference.  
The aforementioned examples represent the types of learning styles we observed during the data analysis. We summarized the two learning styles as follows:  
1. Learning according to the knowledge network (LKN). These learners prefer to learn by following authoritative knowledge points in the knowledge network and creating queries on the basis of these knowledge points. In our experiments, these students commonly searched and learned following Microsoft's official UWP API reference.
2. Learning according to information needs (LIN). Learners who learn according to information needs prefer to learn according to the tasks partitioned by their own subjective. Compared with LKN, LIN learners exhibited more interleaved tasks. In the UWP course, these students usually explored the knowledge points needed to complete the learning task and learned to program sequences.