In higher education, report writing represents a core academic practice through which students are expected to develop epistemic judgment, critical engagement with sources, and structured academic argumentation. However, students’ report-writing practices are increasingly shaped by digitally mediated information environments in which web-based sources and generative AI tools are readily available. While these media offer immediacy and convenience, concerns have been raised in higher education research regarding students’ limited critical scrutiny of information and the potential weakening of academic writing practices. Although instructors often emphasize the educational purposes of report writing—such as fostering critical thinking and academic literacy—these intentions do not always resonate with students whose everyday information practices are embedded in media-saturated contexts.

This study addresses this pedagogical challenge by focusing on students’ metacognitive knowledge of information media in higher education. Rather than framing students’ media use as a problem to be corrected, the study conceptualizes learners’ perceptions of different information media as meaningful resources for reflection and academic development. It proposes a course-based instructional intervention that visualizes learners’ metacognitive knowledge of information gathering, making their perceptions of media characteristics and selection tendencies explicit. By engaging students in structured reflection on their own information practices, the study aims to support the development of more intentional and reflective academic writing in higher education.

The primary objective of this study is to examine whether integrating the visualization of learners’ metacognitive knowledge into report-writing instruction enhances students’ awareness of information media and contributes to improvements in the quality of academic writing. To achieve this objective, the study investigates how students in higher education perceive various information media—books, television, the web, social networking services, and generative AI—before and after a report-writing task, and how these perceptions relate to their academic writing practices.

The study is guided by the following research questions:

• RQ1. How do students in higher education perceive the characteristics of different information media in terms of immediacy, accuracy, preference, and convenience prior to a report-writing assignment?
• RQ2. To what extent does providing learners with visualized feedback on their information-gathering profiles influence changes in their metacognitive knowledge following a report-writing task?
• RQ3. How is learners’ metacognitive knowledge—particularly their understanding of media characteristics and media selection patterns—related to the quality of academic writing in higher education contexts?

Conceptually, the study draws on three intersecting strands of research relevant to higher education.
First, within metacognition and self-regulated learning, metacognitive knowledge is commonly understood as learners’ awareness of tasks, strategies, and personal capabilities. While existing research has focused primarily on strategy regulation, less attention has been paid to learners’ epistemic understanding of the information environments in which academic work is produced. Responding to calls within higher education research to address learning in digitally mediated contexts, this study operationalizes metacognitive knowledge as learners’ comparative understanding of multiple information media.

Second, the study is informed by information and media literacy research in higher education, which has traditionally emphasized normative criteria for evaluating information quality. However, such approaches often overlook how students subjectively conceptualize media characteristics and how these beliefs shape academic practices. By foregrounding learners’ comparative judgments of media, this study adopts a learner-centered perspective that treats these perceptions as objects of pedagogical reflection.

Third, the study builds on research on educational visualization and learner-facing analytics, conceptualizing visualization as a pedagogical design that supports reflection and metacognitive awareness. By visualizing students’ information-gathering profiles, the intervention positions learners as active interpreters of their academic practices, linking media awareness, metacognitive development, and academic writing in higher education.

The study adopts a survey-based, course-embedded design conducted in two higher education contexts at National University N. Participants and Contexts. Study 1 involved 20 students enrolled in a course on information media utilization for library faculty training (August 2024). Study 2 involved 64 students enrolled in courses on information education theory and lifelong learning and media (October 2025). In both studies, participation was voluntary, and only data from students who provided informed consent were included in the analysis. Data Collection. As a preliminary survey, students were asked to comparatively evaluate the characteristics of different information media relevant to academic work. In Study 1, the media included books, newspapers, television, the web (WWW), and social networking services (SNS). In Study 2, generative AI was included as an additional medium. Media were evaluated in terms of immediacy, accuracy, preference, and convenience. To analyze these evaluations, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was employed. Under the overarching objective of “obtaining information useful for study or academic work,” students conducted pairwise comparisons of media based on criteria such as searchability, immediacy, convenience, and preference. Priority weights for criteria and media alternatives were calculated using the eigenvalue method, and the results were visualized using spreadsheet-based AHP tools. In addition, students reported their frequency of media use for each medium using a six-point scale ranging from daily use to non-use. This enabled examination of the relationship between perceived media characteristics and actual information practices in higher education contexts. Instructional Intervention. Following data collection, time was allocated within the courses to provide students with visualized feedback representing their individual and aggregated information-gathering profiles. These visualizations were used as prompts for guided reflection, encouraging learners to reconsider their habitual media selection in relation to the epistemic demands of academic writing. Analysis of Academic Writing. Finally, the study examined relationships between changes in learners’ metacognitive knowledge and the quality of report assignments. Students’ reports were analyzed qualitatively to identify how different information media—particularly generative AI—were positioned and justified within their academic writing.

The study is expected to show that visualizing learners’ metacognitive knowledge of information media supports more differentiated and reflective academic practices in higher education. Across both studies, students tended to recognize books and newspapers as reliable academic sources, while evaluating web-based media and social networking services as advantageous in terms of timeliness. These patterns suggest that students possess nuanced, though often implicit, understandings of media characteristics relevant to academic work. With respect to generative AI, preliminary analyses indicate that media exposure plays a significant role in shaping evaluations. Students with higher exposure to generative AI tended to evaluate it more positively in terms of convenience and searchability, while students with lower exposure expressed more cautious and distanced perspectives. These differences were also reflected in academic writing. Students with lower AI exposure tended to position generative AI cautiously, emphasizing verification and reliability concerns, whereas students with higher exposure more frequently described AI as a tool for supporting academic processes such as idea generation or organizing thoughts prior to writing. Importantly, even among high-exposure students, positive evaluations coexisted with explicit awareness of risks related to over-reliance. Taken together, these findings suggest that pedagogical approaches focusing on metacognitive reflection rather than regulation of tool use can support more intentional engagement with information media in higher education. By making students’ information practices visible and open to reflection, the study highlights report writing as a site for developing academic judgment in digitally mediated environments. This study contributes to Research in Higher Education by demonstrating how learner-facing visualization of metacognitive knowledge can function as a pedagogical design to support reflective academic writing practices, offering empirical insight into how higher education teaching can respond to digital and AI-related transformations of academic work.

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