Using information from word clouds to generate and create knowledge in assessments

Conducting research online to find resources for assessment tasks is a common everyday activity for students at most education levels and settings. When the students access study material via the Internet and without the presence of an instructor, especially in distance education settings, then students can face difficulties in understanding the complete purpose of an assessment. Such difficulties can lead to poor information search practices resulting in a poor knowledge gain, which may in turn lead to poor information synthesis and poor knowledge creation. This study focuses on the use of information tool by novice and experienced university students to gain and create knowledge for their assessment tasks. An intervention in the form of a learning tool was introduced to create a visual and textual support scaffolding for the students, and thus provide them with some relevant learning cues to improve knowledge creation and their engagement with online assessments tasks.