online research habits of undergraduates (pilot)

Online Research Habits of Undergraduates

(pilot)

The Working Group

Suzanne ChapmanJeff CordellEmily HamstraSusan HollarSaurabh KoparkarSonu Mishra

(with advice from Nancy Foster and John Law and print design assistance from Liene Karels)

Background

Via the Instruction Assessment Committee

Out of a desire to have some qualitative data to go along with the large-scale, longitudinal, programmatic assessment being proposed by the group.

Study Description

Problem StatementWe interact with students at all different points in their research, but we know very little about how they actually engage in the research process.

We primarily interact with current or potential library users but rarely with non-users.

Goal To observe how students conduct research “in the wild” so we can tailor our services and access systems to better suit their needs.

Study Description

MethodRemote Observation & follow-up interview.

Dates of ObservationsOctober 6 2010 – Nov 9 2010

Screen Share Recording

Recruiting

Participants

• Undergraduate Students• Primarily LSA• Students who have a “research” assignment• Available for observation sometime in the early

– mid stage of their timeline

#1 ENGLISH 125 First Year

Negative effects of paying college athletes

MLibrary Browse, online databases

Attended a library instruction session

#2TECHCOM 300Second Year

Copyright laws and music piracy

Wikipedia, Google, videos

#3ENGLISH 125First Year

Lower drinking age

Wikipedia, Google, ArticlesPlus, videos


#4PSYCH 303Forth Year

IRB Consent Form

Google, Wikipedia, UMich HRPP website


#5PSYCH 356Forth Year

Cognitive methods used by people while learning foreign languages

PsycInfo, ProQuest

Received library instruction via other means

#6PUBPOL 422Forth Year

Battery subsidies in electric vehicles

Op-Ed, Google, Wikipedia

#7ASIAN 373Second Year

Compare Hindu mythology character versions in two countries

Google, Wikipedia


Research Topic

Negative effects of paying college athletes

Goals • Find scholarly sources to form and support his arguments

Library Experience

• Had attended a library instruction session• Said that he was using MLibrary Browse for the first time and he liked that the sources he got were credible

Resources Used

MLibrary Browse to find online databases – ProQuest, LexisNexis, EBSCOHost, NewsBank

Actions • Pasted database search results URLs into emails for future reference

Search Strategy

• Not many search terms used. Searched mainly for “pay college athletes” and “pay athletes”• Used options/filters to narrow search results• Exhaustively browse database search results (7+ pages deep)

#1: ENGLISH 125 (1st Year Undergrad)

#2: TECHCOM 300 (2nd Year Undergrad)

Research Topic

Copyright laws & music piracy

Goals • Find new journal articles• Find articles again that he found previously• Find quotes in videos

Library Experience

• Had not attended a library instruction session

Resources Used

Google, Wikipedia, videos

Actions • Emailed professor to ask if sources found were ok to use• Pasted text from articles directly into his paper• Played a video in the background to listen for good quotes

Search Strategy

• Found articles previously found by searching his browser history for “.pdf”• Used a variety of search terms

On why he likes Google:

“Google’s faster”“Google has more stuff”“Google doesn’t require me to sign in”

Multitasking!Multitasking!

#3: ENGLISH 125 (1st Year Undergrad)

Research Topic

Lowering drinking age

Goals • Write a paper about a social issue – ‘lowering drinking age’• Find credible sources• Find information in videos

Library Experience

• Had attended a library instruction session• Had sought help from librarians in the past

Resources Used

Google, Wikipedia, videos, ArticlesPlus

Actions • Watched videos online about this topic from CBS & other news sites while searching for other sources

Search Strategy

• Searched only a few terms – ‘drinking age’, ‘drinking lower age’, ‘drinking’• Used limiting options in ArticlesPlus to find scholarly articles with full text

On why he uses videos:

“…clips have real life stories about what happened to some real people, this provides concrete examples for the paper”

On needing to find journals in the library:

“I hear they have a couple of librarians over there that are pretty helpful”

#4: PSYCH 303 (4th Year Undergrad)

Research Topic

IRB Consent Form

Goals • Write a consent form for human subjects in psychology research• Find information about IRB

Library Experience

• Had attended a library instruction session• Said that Google and other systems were often used, and that he didn’t know what’s available in the library

Resources Used

Google, Wikipedia, UMich HRPP website

Actions • Started research by going to the UMich HRPP website

Search Strategy

• Conducts research using Google & Wikipedia for other courses.• Browsed a lot of Wikipedia articles ‘out of curiosity’

On why he didn’t use library resources:

“it’s not something that comes to my mind, I guess it should…but when you have Google and other stuff, and you don’t know what’s available in the library… ”

“it’s not something that comes to my mind, I guess it should…but when you have Google and other stuff, and you don’t know what’s available in the library… ”

Research Topic

"Cognitive methods used by people while learning foreign languages"

Goals • To find articles from the past 10 years• To find about 20 articles that seemed somewhat relevant and then narrow down to the most relevant

Library Experience

• Learned how to search databases in community college• Received library instruction from a GSI• Comes to the library if he needs a physical book

Resources Used

ProQuest, PsycInfo, EBSCO Host

Actions • Downloaded many PDFs• Bookmarks databases to find again

Search Strategy

• Mostly keyword searches• Often revised queries. He explained that as he found sources and learned new keywords, he would modify his search term• Advanced search (to specify date and publication type)• Boolean form options…


“I wasn’t entirely sure; I heard in class… that listing another keyword after the word AND would give me better results…and I wanted to see if it was true. It didn’t seem to change it a whole lot”

On why he used Boolean form AND

On why he bookmarks his databases:

“because they are difficult to find through the U of M library system”

Research Topic

“battery subsidies in electric vehicles”

Goals • Gather information for an assignment to write an op-ed

Library Experience

• Had not attended a library instruction session

Resources Used

Wikipedia, Google (Daily Beast, ABC news blogs, NYTimes)

Actions • Spent a lot of time reading content

Search Strategy

• Initially made simple searches – ‘battery plant subsidy’, but then made them specific – ‘DOE report economic impact of recovery act’ as he learned more about the topic


Research Topic

“comparing Hindu mythology character versions from two countries”

Goals • Research for sources to compare mythological character and its dance form depictions in Cambodia and Thailand• Use both course reserves and the Internet for research

Library Experience

• Had attended a library instruction session

Resources Used

Google, Wikipedia, mentioned using reference books in UGLi

Actions • Browsed through several search results web pages• Saved URLs of sources found in a Word document

Search Strategy

• Started with very broad searches and then narrowed as she broke down her research goals into smaller topics

#7: ASIAN 373 (2nd Year Undergrad)

Library Experience

• 4/7 attended a library instruction session

• 1/7 received library instruction from a GSI

• 1/7 mentioned using the library for print resources

With more data we could make generalizations about the success of students who have had instruction vs. those who haven’t.

Based on these 7, participants who had received library instruction seemed more comfortable with the task of finding scholarly resources.

Resources Used During Observation

• 3/7 used at least 1 library resource (2 of those that didn’t, arguably didn’t really need to)

• 2/7 used videos heavily

• 2/7 used online databases or ArticlesPlus

• 5/7 used Google & Wikipedia heavily

• 0/7 used Mirlyn, SearchTools, Research Guides or Library Website search during the observation.

Search Strategy

• 4/7 used a limited range of keywords

• Most treated any search box encountered as if it was Google

• 5/7 Google-style keyword searches

• 2/7 fielded searches / boolean forms / advanced search /

• 3/7 refined search results using facets or other narrowing option

• 2/7 went past first page of results

Source Evaluation

• Two general styles emerged:• Some participants quickly evaluated sources as they searched

by skimming abstracts, looking at associated keywords or subject headings

• Some participants were more interested in gathering all possible sources to fully evaluate later

• Most participants focused on finding full-text resources but it wasn’t clear if this a major factor in their selection• There was some deliberate filtering

• The ones who were just collecting sources did not appear to search for full-text articles only

Other Findings

• Information management

• 0/7 used a tool designed to facilitate citation management

• 7/7 used a combination of methods to track what they were finding (downloaded pdfs, emailed URLs, noted URLs in a word doc, etc.)

• 3/7 Copy/pasted text from sources directly in the paper

• Multitasking

• 7/7 demonstrated moderate to extreme multitasking (searching, writing paper, listening to music, watching/listening to videos, emailing, etc.) which was probably much less than if we weren’t there.

• Satisfaction levels

• High!

Discussion

• Instruction applications?

• Reference applications?

• Web applications?

Next Steps

• Summaries of each session available now

• Final report available soon

• Should this pilot be expanded?

online research habits of undergraduates (pilot)

Documents