Problem-solving strategies of teachers and students in digital text management

Handling digital texts is often downgraded and considered innate knowledge, which does not require the conscious development of skills related to these processes and artifacts. However, previous studies have revealed that digital text management and documents generate waste, which mostly remains unnoticed and hidden. To reveal the root causes of these differences from various points of view and to understand how effectively students and teachers can modify digital texts, our research group launched a series of tests. The testing process required the modification of two correct and two erroneous digital texts, directed by value-added and requested nonvalue-added activities. The further uniqueness of the project is that all the activities are recorded in a text and a screen capture video file. These data serve as the basis of the qualitative and quantitative analyses. The present paper provides the details of the results of Grades 7 and 8 students and teachers from two elementary schools with 221 participants. The analysis revealed surface actions, where participants spent a lot more time on the tasks than required by waiting, moving, overprocessing, and overproduction carried out by unnecessary keyboard and mouse activities. This realization allowed us to unearth the root causes of the problem. It was found that the level of understanding in this domain of both students and teachers is extremely low, and there is hardly any difference between the students and the teachers. It is also revealed that the low level of understanding in the modification process and the non-value-added activities increase the cognitive load of digital text management, which leads to defects, the most severe form of waste. These causes make digital text management and artifacts error-prone and, as such, accumulate waste, both in terms of human and machine resources. However, teachers and Grade 8 students showed more openness and readiness for development. It was concluded that digital text management poses a huge cognitive load on participants, which leads us to the conclusion that education needs models that can increase the effectiveness of digital learning and productivity by reducing the cognitive load of learning, teaching, and using digital text management, and Lean Digital Education is able to serve these purposes effectively.

Data collection · Note-taking · Qualitative research · Child Development and Digital Technology · Digital Communication and Language · Library Collection Development and Digital Resources