Forming an instructional approach to teach web searching skills to non-English users

Purpose – Locating information on the internet is an important skill in the Information Society. Some recent studies showed that searching using non‐English terms is a more demanding task than searching in English. Based on these observations, this paper aims to apply the Instructional System Design (ISD) methodology to analyse, design and implement a training course for Greek users. This instructional approach considers the explanation of the internal search engine intelligence and inefficiencies with respect to non‐English natural language as its basic structural element.Design/methodology/approach – Based on the ISD methodology, the tasks that needed to be trained as a web searcher were identified and a six‐phase instructional sequence was constructed. The instructional methodology is evaluated with the aid of students in an authentic environment.Findings – The evaluation revealed that learners who followed the structured approach and were aware of the search engines' limitations relating to the Greek ...