The Web as a Learning Environment

The Web is typically used, in educational settings, as a repository of contents to be learned. Within this approach, the Web-searching process tends to be perceived merely as an obstacle on the way to the contents. This paper suggests instead that searching the Web requires information problem solving competences which are in themselves key requisites for literacy in a knowledge society and deserve to be fostered as explicit goals in educational settings. Given the complexity of the competences involved, it is suggested that educational intervention focus on practice with information problems which should be thin in content, but rich in opportunities for bringing to the foreground some critical areas of the information problem solving process.