The Effects of Domain and Search Expertise on Learning Outcomes in Digital Library Use

O'Brien, Heather L.; Cole, Amelia W.; Kampen, Andrea; Brennan, Kathy

doi:10.1145/3498366.3505761

Cited by 9 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 37 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Further analysis revealed that participants tended to use entire task questions for their search rather than related keywords, which produced an excessive number of search results and required more time to locate the necessary information. This is in line with the findings of Wu et al (2021) regarding the relationship between task performance, keyword search and system interaction, as well as O'Brien et al (2022) regarding the impact of search domain and expertise on learning outcomes in DL use. Participants often searched for educational materials using the advisor's name, indicating their interest in discovering more about the author.…”

Section: Mobile Web Library Applicationsupporting

confidence: 89%

“…Wu et al (2021) found that users with different levels of task performance exhibit different usage patterns in the system. O'Brien et al (2022) discovered that search expertise, rather than domain Mobile Web library application expertise, plays a crucial role in facilitating learning during the search process. Roy et al (2020) found that users with more prior knowledge spent more time at the beginning of their search session, whereas those with less prior knowledge spent more time looking at search results.…”

Section: Learning Behaviour and Performance Tasks Using Library Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The process of searching for information plays a crucial role in the field of education as it not only facilitates learning but also contributes to knowledge acquisition (O'Brien et al , 2022). Information search activities enable individuals to discover new search terms, refine their existing knowledge and enhance their understanding of a given subject (Vakkari, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Development of a mobile Web library application for an institutional repository and investigation of its influences on learning

Nguyen,

Hwang,

Pham

et al. 2023

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Purpose 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. Design/methodology/approach 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. Findings 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. Originality/value 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.

show abstract

Section: Mobile Web Library Applicationsupporting

confidence: 89%

Section: Learning Behaviour and Performance Tasks Using Library Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Development of a mobile Web library application for an institutional repository and investigation of its influences on learning

Nguyen,

Hwang,

Pham

et al. 2023

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Their experimental results showed that proficient searchers built task outcomes with higher quality. Similar observations were also made in [42] by J Mao et al In addition to the quality of task outcome, the relation between searchers' proficiency and other search behaviors was also investigated in [43][44] [45]. The search behaviors investigated in these studies include the amount of query words, the length of sessions, the quality of query words, and searchers' judgement on the relevance of search results.…”

Section: H Comparasions With Other Approachesmentioning

confidence: 76%

A Probabilistic Model Toward How People Search to Build Outcomes

et al. 2023

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Although increased attention is being given to understanding how people search to build task outcomes, a formal model of the relation between how people search and how people build task outcomes is still lacking. This paper proposes a unified probabilistic model of how people search to build outcomes. The model involves 3 types of searcher behaviors (i.e., query submission, document selection, and information transformation) to model the effect of the information collected during search, and uses the item response theory to capture the ternary relations between the ability to transform information, the information collected, and the probability of successfully building task outcomes. We evaluate the proposed model in the task of identifying searchers' proficiencies under the assumption that high proficiency searchers would have high abilities to transform information. The results obtained high accuracies and F1 scores, which could reflect the effectiveness of the proposed model. The model contributes to the formal understanding of how people search to build task outcomes, and provides new possibilities for personalized and session-based information retrieval research.INDEX TERMS Item response theory, searching as learning, outcomes.

show abstract

“…Since the advanced search option has been designed for search experts, they are perceived as too difficult to use at the interface level, or the participants do not know how to use the subject categories effectively. User characteristics of domain expertise and search expertise and their interactions with the features of search interfaces contribute to better search or learning outcomes (Liu and Wacholder, 2017; O'Brien et al ., 2022; Wu and Vakkari, 2018). Nonetheless, the usefulness of thesaurus-based information retrieval systems can be enhanced by designing more usable search interfaces, continuous updates of thesaurus terms and drawing on the best practices of domain and search experts when designing search tools supporting query formulation/reformulation tasks.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Online subject searching of humanities PhD students at a Swedish university

Golub,

Tan,

Liu

et al. 2023

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

PurposeThis exploratory study aims to help contribute to the understanding of online information search behaviour of PhD students from different humanities fields, with a focus on subject searching.Design/methodology/approachThe methodology is based on a semi-structured interview within which the participants are asked to conduct both a controlled search task and a free search task. The sample comprises eight PhD students in several humanities disciplines at Linnaeus University, a medium-sized Swedish university from 2020.FindingsMost humanities PhD students in the study have received training in information searching, but it has been too basic. Most rely on web search engines like Google and Google Scholar for publications' search, and university's discovery system for known-item searching. As these systems do not rely on controlled vocabularies, the participants often struggle with too many retrieved documents that are not relevant. Most only rarely or never use disciplinary bibliographic databases. The controlled search task has shown some benefits of using controlled vocabularies in the disciplinary databases, but incomplete synonym or concept coverage as well as user unfriendly search interface present hindrances.Originality/valueThe paper illuminates an often-forgotten but pervasive challenge of subject searching, especially for humanities researchers. It demonstrates difficulties and shows how most PhD students have missed finding an important resource in their research. It calls for the need to reconsider training in information searching and the need to make use of controlled vocabularies implemented in various search systems with usable search and browse user interfaces.

show abstract

The Effects of Domain and Search Expertise on Learning Outcomes in Digital Library Use

Cited by 9 publications

References 37 publications

Development of a mobile Web library application for an institutional repository and investigation of its influences on learning

Development of a mobile Web library application for an institutional repository and investigation of its influences on learning

A Probabilistic Model Toward How People Search to Build Outcomes

Online subject searching of humanities PhD students at a Swedish university

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About