Incubation and Verification Processes in Information Seeking: A Case Study in the Context of Autonomous Learning

Autonomous learning regards students as the center and orientation rather than teachers’ guidance. During autonomous learning, information seeking is not only a process of interactions with systems and stakeholders, but also a process of learning and cognitive transformation from low-level to high-level activities. This study investigated users’ cognitive process and cognitive paths, as well as the creation strategies for independent topic selection during the information seeking process. We conducted a longitudinal study through tracking interviews with eight university students who planned to select a topic for their theses or independent study. The interviews were conducted weekly to collect data of their cognitive process and seeking behaviors. It is found that: (1) four lower levels of cognitive process (understanding, applying, analyzing and evaluating) often occur during the stages before formulation, while creating occurs in the formulation stage; (2) three cognitive paths for topic selection were identified: "understand - apply - create", "understand - analyze - create" and "understand - analyze - evaluate - create", and (3) two creation strategies for topic selection according to the duration of creation stages were identified: Incubation and Verification. These results shed light on the design of search systems that could better assist the autonomous learning process and for users to accomplish creative learning tasks.