An Integrated Contextual and Web-Based Problem-Solving Approach to Improving Students´ Learning Achievements, Attitudes and Critical Thinking

In the era of computer and communication technologies, fostering students´ high-level thinking abilities has become an important educational objective web-based problem-solving has been recognized as being a helpful approach for promoting the thinking process of students. In this study, a contextual learning approach is employed in web-based problem-solving activities for improving students´ learning achievement, attitude and critical thinking ability. The participants were divided into an experimental group, which were guided to use Internet resources to complete problem-based learning missions with the contextual learning approach, and a control group, which learned with the conventional web-based problem-solving approach that situated students in a pure web-based problem-solving environment to search for information for the issue to be investigated. From the experimental results, it was found that the experimental group exhibited significantly better learning attitudes, learning achievement, and better critical thinking than the control group, suggesting the effectiveness of the integrated contextual and web-based problem-solving approach in helping students use Internet resources to solve problems.