ABSTRACT
This chapter summarises the challenges of internet-based information problem-solving (IPS-I) tasks and highlights the importance of metacognitive judgements about one’s own ability in this context. Scarce prior research shows that using the internet affects metacognitive judgements regarding IPS tasks. For example, users tend to overestimate their own abilities to solve IPS-I tasks. We present new quantitative and qualitative results about users’ (n = 35) perceptions of task demands regarding factual, explanatory, and socio-scientific issue IPS tasks with and without the internet. Analyses of their metacognitive and non-metacognitive judgements, and of their answers in structured interviews, revealed that users interpreted tasks differently based on whether they could use the internet or not. For instance, they considered IPS-I tasks less difficult and effortful to solve than similar tasks without the internet, potentially because they also considered the internet an “all-knowing oracle”. Throughout the chapter, we also outline future trends in this line of research, as well as educational implications. In particular, if learners should overestimate their abilities in IPS-I tasks in real-life education, they could come to think that they could learn anything quickly, which might decrease their appreciation of and motivation for formal education in schools and universities.
