Search results

This study considers online searching by health information consumers as a learning process. We focus on search sequences, query reformulation, and conceptual changes.

A qualitative user study (30 participants; three health information seeking tasks) investigated mobile searching behavior. Recorded screen activity, questionnaires, and in-depth personal interview data were collected and analyzed.

(1) Search platform sequences of health information consumers in search as a learning process were exacted and their features were highlighted. (2) Query sequence and reformulation pattern of health information consumers were exacted and discussed. (3) The types and degree of conceptual changes of health consumers were reflected by their query reformulation behavior and differ from different health information search tasks. (4) Characteristics of health consumers' search as learning process were revealed.

(1) A novel perspective of consumer health information studies was proposed by exacting search platform sequence, query sequence and linking them with conceptual changes during the search as learning process. (2) Conceptual changes in the searching as a learning process are regarded as a measure of search outcome in this study, in which terms extracted from queries were used to reflect conceptual changes in consumers' mind. (3) Our findings provide evidences that types of health information seeking tasks do have significant influences on the search as a learning process.

The findings of this study can lead to the fit-to-needs of the search platforms, provide advice for information architecture of search list of search platforms, and guide the design of knowledge graph of health information systems.

Potential relationships between information-seeking behavior and conceptual changes in search as a learning process relative to health information were revealed.

This paper aims to establish a theoretical search model on academic social networking sites (ASNSs).

Based on the characteristics of ASNSs and a previous extended sense-making model, this paper first presented an initial model of searching on ASNSs. Next, an online survey was conducted on ResearchGate to understand the search processes and outcomes with the help of a survey questionnaire. In total, 359 participants from 70 countries participated in this online survey. The survey results provided a basis for modifying the initial model.

Results showed that the theoretical model of searching on ASNSs included motives for searching on ASNSs, identification of needs, search triggered by information needs, search triggered by social needs and outcomes. The search triggered by information needs was significantly positively correlated with learning outcomes. Besides learning outcomes, searching on ASNSs could help user amplify their social networks and promote research dissemination.

Understanding users’ search habits and knowledge acquisition can provide insights for ASNSs to design an interface to support searching and enhance learning. Moreover, the proposed model can help users recognize their knowledge status and learning effects and improve their learning efficiency.

This paper contributes to establishing a theoretical model to understand users’ search process and outcomes on ASNSs.

The purpose of this paper is to explore users’ learning in the collaborative information search process when they conduct an academic task as a group.

This paper presents a longitudinal study for a three-month period on an actual task. The participants, who were undergraduate students, needed to write a research proposal in three months to apply for funding for a research project, including a three-hour experiment.

The results show that undergraduates’ learning in the collaborative search process for academic group work included knowledge reconstruction, tuning, and assimilation. Their understanding of the topic concepts improved through the process, and their attitudes became more optimistic. Besides, the learning in the collaborative information search process also enhanced participants’ skills in communication, research, information search, and collaboration. To improve learning outcomes, professional and appropriate academic resources are required, as well as effective division of labor, positive sharing behaviors, and use of collaborative systems.

The future development of collaborative information search systems should focus on the needs of academic research and support for elements such as instant communication and knowledge sharing.

This paper contributes to research into searching as learning by understanding undergraduates’ collaborative search behavior for writing a proposal.

This paper aims to present recently published resources on information literacy and library instruction providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering all library types.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2016.

The paper provides information about each source, describes the characteristics of current scholarship and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

This study aims to explore the influence of topic familiarity on the four stages of college students' learning search process.

This study clarified the effects of topic familiarity on students' learning search process by conducting a simulation experiment based on query formulation, information item selection, information sources and learning output.

The results characterized users' interaction behaviors in increasing topic familiarity through their use of more task descriptions as queries, increased reformulation of queries, construction of more purposeful query formulation, reduced attention to a topic's basic concept content and increased exploration of academic platform contents.

This study proposed three innovative indicators which were proposed to evaluate the effects of topic familiarity on college students' learning search process, and the adopted metrics were useful for observing differences in college students' learning output as their topic familiarity increased. It contributes to the understanding of a user's search process and learning output to support the optimization function of learning-related information search systems and improve their effect on the user's search process for learning.

Many of today’s information and technology systems and environments facilitate inquiry, learning, consciousness-raising and knowledge-building. Such platforms include e-learning systems which have learning, education and/or training as explicit goals or objectives. They also include search engines, social media platforms, video-sharing platforms, and knowledge sharing environments deployed for work, leisure, inquiry, and personal and professional productivity. The new journal, Information and Learning Sciences, aims to advance our understanding of human inquiry, learning and knowledge-building across such information, e-learning, and socio-technical system contexts.

This article introduces the journal at its launch under new editorship in January, 2019. The article, authored by the journal co-editors and all associate editors, explores the lineage of scholarly undertakings that have contributed to the journal's new scope and mission, which includes past and ongoing scholarship in the following arenas: Digital Youth, Constructionism, Mutually Constitutive Ties in Information and Learning Sciences, and Searching-as-Learning.

The article offers examples of ways in which the two fields stand to enrich each other towards a greater holistic advancement of scholarship. The article also summarizes the inaugural special issue contents from the following contributors: Caroline Haythornthwaite; Krista Glazewski and Cindy Hmelo-Silver; Stephanie Teasley; Gary Marchionini; Caroline R. Pitt; Adam Bell, Rose Strickman and Katie Davis; Denise Agosto; Nicole Cooke; and Victor Lee.

The article, this special issue, and the journal in full, are among the first formal and ongoing publication outlets to deliberately draw together and facilitate cross-disciplinary scholarship at this integral nexus. We enthusiastically and warmly invite continued engagement along these lines in the journal’s pages, and also welcome related, and wholly contrary points of view, and points of departure that may build upon or debate some of the themes we raise in the introduction and special issue contents.

This study aims to examine the effects of the proposed mobile Web library application (MWLA) on the search experience and its impact on learners’ engagement, interaction and overall learning outcomes within an institutional repository. Furthermore, the study investigates learners’ acceptance of the MWLA system.

The study suggests implementing an MWLA with Algolia’s search service to improve the institutional repository and enhance learners’ access to reliable information. It involved an experiment with 85 undergraduate students divided into experimental and control groups (CGs), where the experimental group (EG) used MWLA for search tasks, and the CG used the traditional library website. The study evaluated the acceptance and learning behaviours of the EG towards MWLA, considering factors such as usefulness, ease of use, mobility, accessibility, satisfaction and intention to use.

The findings of this study provide empirical evidence that the EG, which used the MWLA, demonstrated superior performance compared to the CG across all institutional repository collections, resulting in improved learning outcomes. Participants were highly satisfied with MWLA and found it user-friendly and beneficial for improving search skills. MWLA’s portability and accessibility motivated active learner engagement.

The powerful search bar of MWLA significantly enhanced learners’ search efficiency, resulting in more effective retrieval of relevant materials. Moreover, learners who actively engaged with previews and full-text content, using appropriate keywords and syntax, achieved higher scores and were more likely to access previews, abstracts and full texts of documents using the sorting-by-year or by-advisor feature.

Recent studies on search-as-learning (SAL) have recognized the significance of identifying users' learning needs as they evolve for acquiring knowledge during the search process. In this study, the authors clarify the extent to which search behaviors reflect the learning outcome and foster the users' knowledge of Chinese art.

The authors conducted an exploratory-sequential mixed-methods approach using simulated work task situations to collect empirical data. The authors used two types of simulated learning tasks for topics related to painting and antique knowledge. A lot of 25 users participated in this evaluation of digital archives (DAs) at the National Palace Museum (NPM) in Taiwan. For each set of topics, a close-ended task related to lower-level learning goals and an open-ended task related to higher-level learning goals.

The learning criteria reflect changes in the users' knowledge structure, revealing the SAL process. Furthermore, users achieved better task performance on the higher-level creative-learning task, which suggests that they met more learning criteria, exhibited a greater variety of search patterns when exploring the topics via interaction with various sources. Finally, there is a close relationship between creative-learning tasks, prior knowledge, keyword search actions and learning outcomes.

The authors discuss implications with respect to the design of DAs in practice and contributions to the body of SAL knowledge in DAs of online museums. For future reference, the authors provide implications for the development of learning measures from the perspective of user search behavior with associated learning outcomes in the context of DAs.

This paper investigates the experiences of school teachers of supporting pupils and their apprehensions of how pupils search and assess information when search engines have become a technology of literacy in schools. By situating technologies of literacy as sociomaterial the purpose of this paper is to analyse and discuss these experiences and understandings in order to challenge dominant views of search in information literacy research.

Six focus group interviews with in total 39 teachers working at four different elementary and secondary schools were conducted in the autumn of 2014. Analysis was done using a sociomaterial perspective, which provides tools for understanding how pupils and teachers interact with and are demanded to translate their interest to technologies of literacy, in this case search engines, such as Google.

The teachers expressed difficulties of conceptualizing search as something they could teach. When they did, search was most often identified as a practical skill. A critical perspective on search, recognizing the role of Google as a dominant part of the information infrastructure and a co-constructor of what there is to know was largely lacking. As a consequence of this neglected responsibility of teaching search, critical assessment of online information was conflated with Google’s relevance ranking.

The study develops a critical understanding of the role of searching and search engines as technologies of literacy in relation to critical assessment in schools. This is of value for information literacy training.

This paper aims to discuss how search, sense making and learning have become more closely integrated, as search services have leveraged new technologies and large and media-diverse data streams.

The paper reviews progress in search over the past 60 years, summarizes different theories of sense making and learning and proposes a framework for integrating these activities.

The arguments are supported with examples from search in 2018 and suggest that even as search becomes an automated process during learning, search strategies must continue to evolve to insure that complex information needs can be met.

The work is limited to search that uses electronic search systems. Implications include the need to understand that multiple levels of system inferences/estimates are used to present search results and that different kinds of learning processes are affected by search systems.

The importance of information literacy is implied.

This paper will provide readers with an understanding of how search services and systems have evolved and their implications for human learning.