High school students' experiences of learning through research on the internet

One of the challenges that school educators face today is the need to integrate learning technologies into the learning experience in a meaningful and sustainable way. The current research focuses on how students' experience learning through new technologies in high schools across New South Wales, Australia, specifically when they learn by researching through the Internet. Open‐ended questionnaires were administered to over 300 high school students to explore their conceptions of learning through research on the Internet, approaches to learning through research on the Internet, and approaches to integrating various sources of knowledge. Students' descriptions of their learning experiences show qualitative variation in their conceptions and approaches to using the Internet in their learning, variation that is reflected in their academic performance. Our analysis suggests that the experience of learning through research on the Internet is highly relational, a finding that emphasizes the importance of integration of various sources of knowledge both for student approaches to learning and for teacher approaches to designing learning task