Objectives: During the early COVID-19 pandemic, college students had to switch to an online learning and online communication environment facing the chances of information overload, misinformation or conflicting information about COVID-19. This study aims to assess the communication needs that have arisen among college students to shed light on…

Misunderstandings about how the academic world operates are common among international students. This research investigated international students' understandings of academic regulations. Qualitative content analysis of 3,438 email messages indicate international students used a constellation of arguments to make academic requests/complaints to…

Limited literacy has a large impact on the U.S. population; about half of adults lack sufficient literacy proficiency. However, not all populations are impacted equally, as there is a significant comorbidity between low literacy and mental illness. The authors have found that smartphones can offer mental health patients with low literacy numerous…

College outreach efforts are sometimes received as nuisances, or worse, as maddening spam and junk email. New digital technologies and data-driven targeting innovations are reducing the amount of paper materials distributed, yet they are not reducing the oversaturation experienced by many prospective students. Colleges use Search and Encoura to…

South African universities' use of digital technologies in learning has increased in recent years. Given that social exposure, the context and pedagogic uses of technology influence learning expectations and learner involvement, it is important to understand students' experiences of the use of different technological tools. This article employs…

This study examined the preferences of high school seniors (N = 2901) for receiving college and career information, an area not well-studied previously. Key findings are: Parents and peers are rated to be very helpful sources of college and career information; school counselors are a helpful source of information for first-generation and…

This study aimed to identify the degree of usage by Kuwait University (KU) faculty members of the academic support information and communication technology (ICT) tools, services, systems, and resources provided by KU. The study comprised an exploratory descriptive research design, using a survey questionnaire technique. A total of 304 faculty…

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of information placement within the confines of the online classroom architecture. Also reviewed was the impact of other variables such as course design, teaching presence and student patterns in looking for information. The sample population included students from a major online university in…

Background: Single session email consultations in web-based parenting support may be used for a variety of reasons. Parents may be looking for information on developmental needs of children, for suggestions to improve their parenting skills, or for referrals to helpful resources. The way the practitioner meets the needs of parents, choosing a…

School board members are struggling to interpret laws that govern where and how they do business now that as many conversations take place digitally as they do face to face. As online and digital interactions increase, so too does public concern that officials have more opportunities to violate state open-meetings and open-records laws meant to…

The oz-Teachers listserv, an email list for teachers, ran continuously for 20 years, from 1995 to 2015. It provided the technical infrastructure for professional communication with the majority of its members being Australian teachers based in classrooms across the country. An analysis of the list archives provides us with interesting insights as…

Information overload, and an expectation that e-mails, tweets, and text messages will be answered immediately, impact productivity. The younger, information-addicted workers have a greater capacity to process this open floodgate of information, as well as a better ability to multitask. Research suggests that there is a marked drop in worker…

In August 2008, the Missouri River Regional Library (MRRL), where the author serves as information technology coordinator, switched over from an internally hosted Microsoft Exchange email server to the Google Apps product. As the person who led the charge to use Google Apps and the person who actually flipped the switch, he was responsible for…

We asked the same 60 questions using DRS (digital reference services) in Japanese public libraries, face-to-face reference services and Q & A (question and answer) sites. It was found that: (1) The correct answer ratio of DRS is higher than that of Q & A sites; (2) DRS takes longer to provide answers as compared to Q & A sites; and (3)…

Quora (www.quora.com) is a contemporary, web-based take on reference. Users post questions within Quora and other users answer the questions. Users can vote for and against answers (or not vote at all). It is users asking questions of friends and strangers and then sorting through the results. If the model sounds familiar, it's because it is.…