What is Learning assignment/task

The purpose of this chapter is to present and discuss findings from a study of students’ information seeking and use for a learning assignment. The overall interest is to describe the coherence between differences in the quality of students’ information seeking and the quality of their learning outcomes and to relate this to issues of information literacy in the Knowledge Society. The study was framed within a sociocultural perspective of learning and adopted an ethnographic approach. Analysis of data resulted in the identification of two major categories of competences related to information seeking and knowledge formation, one of which involves serious shortcomings in meaningful learning through information seeking. There is little evidence that ICT conclusively supports the development of new knowledge in terms of seeing the world differently. Conclusions are that the school system tends to produce ‘information illiterates’ which may entail unwanted consequences for both individuals and for maintaining a democratic Knowledge Society.