Although information searching in hypermedia environments has become a new important problem solving capability, there is not much known about what types of individual characteristics constitute a successful information search behavior. This study mainly investigated which of the 2 factors, 1) natural characteristics (cognitive style), and 2)…

This paper proposes an ontology mapping-based framework that allows searching for learning resources using multiple ontologies. The present applications of ontologies in e-learning use various ontologies (eg, domain, curriculum, context), but they do not give a solution on how to interoperate e-learning systems based on different ontologies. The…

Many students cannot discriminate between posts that are accurate and attributable and those that are undocumented and misleading. This fact leads teachers to limit online research to subscription services like netTrekker or Web directories like Awesome Library. While sites like these certainly play an important role in the classroom, there…

For years, patrons have been able to access library services from home and in the library building, but in the world of Google, Yahoo, YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook, library web sites and catalogs are too often not the first place people go to look for information. The innovative use of toolbars could change this. Toolbars have been popular for…

Discussion of the use of search output clustering as an alternative representation method to ranked output focuses on difficulties involved in representing clusters for Internet users' evaluation in a concise and easily interpretable form. Describes findings and user feedback from a user study that investigated the effectiveness of search output…

The main purpose of this study was to examine the structural relationships between scientific epistemological views (SEVs) and information commitments (ICs) of high school students in Taiwan. Data were collected from 486 Taiwanese high school students via two self-reporting instruments: one was the SEV questionnaire, including five scales for…

According to government reports, new Internet technologies present readers with new reading opportunities and challenges (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000; RAND Reading Study Group [RRSG], 2002). However, we are just beginning to understand the specific complexities that Internet text imposes on the reading…

The idea of "information commitments" refers to both learners' online searching strategies and the evaluative standards that students use to assess the accuracy and usefulness of information in web-based learning environments. Based upon the results of a pioneering and qualitative study on information commitments, this study aimed to develop an…

Discusses specialized search engines for information on specific topics on the Internet. Explains reasons for using specialized search engines; highlights search engines in the fields of health care, legal information, and multimedia formats; and provides Web sites that are helpful in finding other specialized search engines. (LRW)

This study compared Pairs of students with Single students in web search tasks. The underlying hypothesis was that peer-to-peer collaboration encourages students to articulate their thoughts, which in turn has a facilitative effect on the regulation of the search process as well as search outcomes. Both hypotheses were supported by the results.…

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the use of extensible external representations can improve the efficiency of Web search processes for open-ended questions. An experimental Web search environment capable of visually representingWeb search processes was developed, and its utility was evaluated. Thirty undergraduate and graduate…

This article presents systems that use speech technology, to emulate the one-on-one interaction a student can get from a virtual instructor. A web-based learning tool, the Learn IN Context (LINC+) system, designed and used in a real mixed-mode learning context for a computer (C++ language) programming course taught at the Université de Moncton…

Millennial students make up a large portion of undergraduate students attending colleges and universities, and they have a variety of online resources available to them to complete academically related information searches, primarily Web based and library-based online information retrieval systems. The content, ease of use, and required search…

In the last issue, this journal asked a question on many librarians' minds, and it was pleased with the depth and variety of responses. As suggested by this journal editorial board member Oliver Pesch, readers were asked, "Many libraries have gone to federated searching to win users back from Google. Is it working?" Respondents approached the…

Among librarians, government information has a reputation for being a valuable but underused resource. A literature review of undergraduate citation studies, however, reveals that the use of government information has apparently increased so much for some subject areas that, after books and journals, it has become one of the most frequently used…