Evaluation of Online Inquiry Competences of Chilean Elementary School Students

In 2022, a cross-sectional study was conducted to assess elementary students' online inquiry competences (OCI) within a quasi-realistic context. Our diagnostic framework encompasses a spectrum of information challenges within the natural sciences, stratified by grade level (i.e., 4th, 6th, and 8th grades), question category (i.e., closed-ended, descriptive, causal explanation, verification, prediction, difficulty (i.e., easy, intermediate, difficult), and generalization), and challenge type (i.e., open-ended response and source evaluation). To engage students in the diagnostic process while maintaining control over the information resources accessed during the search sessions, we used the Trivia game [1], powered by the NEURONE ecosystem [2]. Accordingly, both the challenges and the repository of information resources (e.g., web pages, images, and videos) were loaded onto the Trivia platform. This facilitated an experiential learning environment for students, simulating search experiences similar to those provided by contemporary search engines such as Google and Bing.
The diagnostic was administered to 169 students from three public schools and 110 students from a private educational institution within the metropolitan area of Chile. This work presents the resulting dataset, which encompasses behavioral, affective, and cognitive data derived from 1055 search sessions.

REFERENCES
1. González-Ibáñez R, Chourio-Acevedo L, Gacitúa D, Márquez C, Mellado J, Villarreal F, et al. Let’s Play: Toward an Effective Approach to Assess Online Inquiry Competences at School Level. In: 2021 40th International Conference of the Chilean Computer Science Society (SCCC). 2021. p. 1–8.
2. González-Ibáñez R, Gacitúa D, Sormunen E, Kiili C. Neurone: oNlinE inqUiRy experimentatiON systEm. Proc Assoc Inf Sci Technol. 2017;54(1):687–9.