Strategies of seeking information on the Web: A problem solving approach Mario Barajas*Elisabet Higueras*Bob Miller° Barbara Jones°*University of Barcelona, Dep. of Didactics and Educational Organization°University of Manchester, Institute of Science and TechnologyThe age of information and media hype has dramatically changed the relationship between knowledge and learning. The Internet provides learners with a lot of information that most of the time has not been chosen under any specific criteria. The quality and reliability of the information acquired is not a matter of technical knowledge of the tools, but of which strategies and behaviours are used to reach this information. In this paper we present the preliminary results of the project Information Seeking Strategies of Adult Learners in the Information Society (SEEKS), a project funded by the European Commission, Program SOCRATES-Minerva. The research consists of a series of case studies performed in five different national sites. The settings, the methodology and the results of an exploratory study undertaken in one of the sites are reported. This exploratory study was done with the aim of providing a provisional taxonomy and a subsequent methodology that could be applied in the other cases.As research background, a review of the current taxonomies and models of information seeking behaviours is presented. Wilson's (1996) general model of searching for information was used as the framework within which to perform the study with a sample of thirty adults holding an undergraduate degree and low IT skills; the sample was selected among young professionals working in social inclusion services: teachers, NGO volunteers, social workers, psychologists, pedagogues, etc. Within five different scenarios each participant performed a series of tasks requiring him or her to search for information on the Web. A qualitative approach was used for data gathering and analysis. Both direct and indirect observation, entry questionnaires and exit interviews were among the main research tools. The analysis looked at the key indicators of information seeking strategies, such as searching tools selected, type of websites visited, decisions made, data contrasting, and reliability and confidence of sites, among other.The preliminary results indicate that all the behaviours were part of a decision-making process in which users chose information among the options. We synthesized the process into six phases and constructed a provisional model of information seeking behaviours on the Web. The variables used by the participants in each phase helped to distinguish among three types of searching behaviours (passive, selective and dynamic), which were heavily dependent on the strategies used.The results might help to develop better approaches for e-learning programs and for non-formal education. It is important to take into account that there is not yet a culture of using the Web for seeking information; people do not connect the use of Internet and every-day information seeking actions for answering common queries, and it appears that, in general, they lack strategies for selecting quality sources among the information found.