Undergraduate students' interaction with online information resources in their academic tasks

Abstract

Purpose -This paper aims to identify the opinions of undergraduate students on the importance of internet-based information sources when they undertake academic tasks. Design/methodology/approach -Based on a set of identified typical academic tasks for undergraduate students, three research questions were designed around the students' usage and views of information resources for completing these tasks. Web-accessible questionnaires were used to collect data from participants in two universities in the USA and China, and the data were analyzed using quantitative methods, which included several statistic methods. Findings -The results confirm that undergraduate students use different information resources for various academic tasks. In their tasks, online electronic resources including search engines are the most commonly used resources, particularly for complex academic tasks. Social networking sites are not used for the students' individual academic tasks, and traditional resources still play equal or more important roles in certain specific academic tasks. Students in collaborative tasks look for resources that make it easy to share documents. Participants from the two countries also exhibit interesting and important differences in their usage of information resources. Originality/value -This study examines undergraduate students' usages and views of different information resources in their various academic tasks, and pays special attention to the impacts of being from their different countries. The study also considers both students' individual academic tasks and collaborative tasks. This study is an invaluable addition to the information seeking behaviour literature. IntroductionWith the rapid development of communication and web technologies, scholars in all disciplines have access to an unprecedented wealth of information, tools and services (2008). The internet lies at the center of a global information infrastructure for distributed, data-intensive and collaborative research (Borgman, 2007). Creating and disseminating information online has become possible and desirable with the help of more vibrant, social and participatory Web 2.0 tools (Anderson, 2007); at the same time, it becomes increasingly critical for people to utilize various online information resources as a great deal of relevant information is available only online.Studying the interactions with information resources in people's search or information seeking is part of the study of information (seeking) behaviour (Ingwersen and Kalervo, 2005). Fisher and Julien (2009) describe in their review that studies of information behaviour can be classified based on the studied populations (such as scientists, students, certain occupational groups, or ordinary people in everyday life situations), the employed information sources (interpersonal, social networking, the internet, and libraries), the key contextual aspects and the underlying theoretical frameworks. This classification helps us to establish the research focus of this paper, which can be summ...

University students’ self-regulated learning using digital technologies

“…Today's students are ever more accustomed to using specific tools that help them to locate, organize and recover the information they need. This is not the case when it comes to relying upon these tools to manage and correctly use the sources in their academic work (He et al, 2012). Students prefer digital documents available online.…”

“…Superficial use with limited information processing. Students resort to online encyclopaedias and dictionaries, as opposed to hard copies, when faced with the need to look up the definition of a concept (He et al, 2012). More specifically, they resort to Wikipedia when they need to quickly inquire about an unknown fact or topic or for in-depth information regarding a given topic (Lim, 2009).…”

Comportamento Informacional: Um Estudo Com Alunos Do Curso De Administração

“…A pesquisa realizada por He et al (2012) com alunos dos Estados Unidos e da China, por exemplo, teve como objetivo identificar a opinião de estudantes de graduação sobre a importância de recursos baseados na internet para realizar atividades acadêmicas. A pesquisa foi realizada com alunos das áreas de humanas, ciências, medicina e saúde, ciências sociais e engenharia.…”

“…Conhecer as necessidades informacionais e o comportamento de busca de informações desses alunos torna-se, portanto, relevante a fim de direcionar os bibliotecários, professores e coordenadores de curso para que eles ofereçam serviços e instrução apropriados, moldados a essas necessidades informacionais (CATALANO, 2013). Embora pesquisas anteriores já tenham examinado o comportamento informacional de estudantes de diversas áreas tais como humanas, engenharia, artes, medicina e ciências sociais (HE et al, 2012;NWAGWU, 2012;BRENNAN, 2014), parece haver espaço para a análise do comportamento informacional de alunos da área de negócios, especificamente de estudantes do curso de Administração. De acordo com Martinez-Silveira e Oddone (2007), as necessidades informacionais são subjetivas e muitas vezes estão relacionadas às atividades profissionais de cada indivíduo.…”

Comparison of three web-scale discovery services for health sciences research*

“…These features pose attractive advantages to health sciences library users, including undergraduate and graduate students as well as health sciences faculty. In addition to ample literature demonstrating undergraduates' strong tendency to opt for the convenience and familiarity of the web over library databases [1][2][3][4][5], research has demonstrated that graduate students, including those in the health sciences, prefer Google as a search tool due to its speed and ease of use [6][7][8], and health sciences faculty are likewise increasingly using Google and Google Scholar for research [9]. Academic researchers frequently choose these tools over traditional bibliographic databases because of their efficiency and relevance ranking [10].…”