Use of Web Search Engines and Personalisation in Information Searching for Educational Purposes

Autor/inn/en	Salehi, Sara; Du, Jia Tina; Ashman, Helen
Titel	Use of Web Search Engines and Personalisation in Information Searching for Educational Purposes
Quelle	In: Information Research: An International Electronic Journal, 23 (2018) 2, (13 Seiten) PDF als Volltext kostenfreie Datei Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1368-1613
Schlagwörter	Internet; Search Engines; Information Seeking; College Students; Student Surveys; Preferences; Likert Scales; Relevance (Education); Bias; Information Sources; Foreign Countries; Student Research; Australia + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Suchmaschine; Informationserschließung; Collegestudent; Schülerbefragung; Likert-Skala; Relevance; Relevanz; Information source; Informationsquelle; Ausland; Studentenforschung; Australien
Abstract	Introduction: Students increasingly depend on Web search for educational purposes. This causes concerns among education providers as some evidence indicates that in higher education, the disadvantages of Web search and personalised information are not justified by the benefits. Method: One hundred and twenty university students were surveyed about their information-seeking behaviour for educational purposes. We also examined students' information access while using Web search, through twenty-eight one-on-one study sessions. Analysis: Survey participants ranked their preference towards different information resources on a 5-point Likert scale. Given equal exposure to the first five standard pages of the search results during the study sessions, students' explicit and implicit feedback was used to evaluate the relevance of the search results. Results: First, most participating students declared that they use Google search engine as their primary or only information-seeking tool. Second, about 60% of the clicked result links during the study sessions were located in pages 2+ of the search results without personalisation influencing the relevance of the top-ranked search results. In real-life scenarios pages 2+ of the search results receive only ~10% of the clicks. Students also expressed more satisfaction with the relevance of non-personalised over personalised search results. These differences presented a missed information opportunity, an opportunity bias, for students. (As Provided).
Anmerkungen	Thomas D. Wilson. 9 Broomfield Road, Broomhill, Sheffield, S10 2SE, UK. Web site: http://informationr.net/ir
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2020/1/01