With the Internet-evoked paradigm shift in the academy, there has been a growing interest in students' Web-based information-seeking and source-use practices. Nevertheless, little is known as to how individual students go about searching for sources online and selecting source material for writing particular assignments. This exploratory study focuses on the Web-based searching and reading practices of a group of undergraduate students at a university in Hong Kong in preparing their end-of-semester written assignments. The data drawn upon included interviews and the students' process logs and their notes from reading. The study revealed that the students employed a range of search engines to conduct online research, they skim-read and read around search terms to select sources and source content, and they took indexical notes to document their decisions over citations for their essay. The paper ends by pointing out some pedagogical implications of the study and suggesting in-depth case studies as an avenue of further research.
[Copyright of Educational Media International is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09523987.2012.738013]

The design of the problems that are used in problem-based learning plays an important part in achieving the intended learning objectives set by teaching staff. To a large extent, the learning issues generated by students during tutorials determine their learning activities and form the framework for the direction of self-directed study. The relevance of these learning issues will drive and stimulate students to become more competent self-directed learners. The work described in this paper explores the match between students' learning issues and the learning objectives that have been set by teaching staff. The findings indicate that students recognize (on average) 79.9% of the learning objectives with a significant improvement as the semester progresses (p < 0.01). There is also evidence to suggest that students move towards independent learning as a result of problem-based learning.
[Copyright of Innovations in Education & Teaching International is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1470329032000103762]