Noorhidawati Abdullah

Students' attitudes towards e‐books in a Scottish higher education institute: part 1

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present the first part of three inter‐related studies investigating the use and usability of e‐books in higher education based on experiments conducted at the University of Strathclyde.Design/methodology/approach – A self‐selected sampling method was employed from undergraduate and postgraduate instructional students registered with the University of Strathclyde for academic year 2005/2006. An announcement email was posted to the student web portal for a period of three weeks inviting them to participate in the survey.Findings – This survey found that e‐book awareness and the level of e‐book usage amongst students was lower than anticipated: 57 per cent of students were not aware of the availability of e‐books from the library and 60 per cent of them had not used an e‐book. Non‐users commented that e‐books were not widely advertised or promoted. Despite the low levels of e‐book awareness and usage non‐e‐book users indicated their desire to learn more about e‐books...

Students' attitudes towards e-books in a Scottish higher education institute. Part 2: Analysis of e-book usage

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present the second part of three inter‐related studies investigating the use and usability of e‐books in higher education based on experiments conducted at the University of Strathclyde. Design/methodology/approach – The research discussed here involved two analyses: an analysis of two e‐book collections in the libraries of the University of Strathclyde and the University of Glasgow and an analysis of a follow‐up study to a web survey into user interactions with e‐books in one of the librarys collections. Findings – The follow‐up study found that in general students found that interacting with e‐books in the library collection was easy. Students indicated that their preferred book formats varied depending on the context of their information need. Despite their positive reaction and attitudes towards e‐books, students commented that e‐books needed to be promoted more strongly and that there were limitations with respect to their use. Research limitations/implications – The study presented here was a small‐scale study based only on e‐book collections from one supplier (NetLibrary) and involved only 18 respondents. While this is considered sufficient based on the discount usability testing concept, generalisation of the results should be made with caution. Practical implications – The findings should be of value to academic libraries in terms of improving e‐book collection management. This study highlights current attitudes of students towards e‐book in terms of how they interact with them, the features they value and their preferences between e‐books and paper books in a university library. Originality/value – This paper provides useful information on students’ attitudes towards e‐books.

Semantic query for Quran documents results

The query-based on the result is less relevant documents results. In this study, a query has been improved in order to retrieve more relevant documents across language boundaries, a mechanism for query translation with semantic which is applied on as semantic query (SQ). Therefore, this study is conducted with the purposes to investigate semantic approach against the queries and vice versa. Furthermore, it is also conducted to investigate the performance query based on total retrieve and relevant. The retrieval however, included the irrelevant documents because of the translation polysemy. Results from the experiments suggest that semantic approach is most important process in cross language information retrieval (CLIR). It also found that semantic approach contributes to better performance in retrieving more relevant and related Quran document results.

Using a task-based approach in evaluating the usability of BoBIs in an e-book environment

This paper reports on a usability evaluation of BoBIs (Back-of-the-book Indexes) as searching and browsing tools in an e-book environment. This study employed a task-based approach and within-subject design. The retrieval performance of a BoBI was compared with a ToC and Full-Text Search tool in terms of their respective effectiveness and efficiency for finding information in e-books. The results demonstrated that a BoBI was significantly more efficient (faster) and useful compared to a ToC or Full-Text Search tool for finding information in an e-book environment.

Students’ attitudes towards e‐books in a Scottish Higher Education Institute: Part 3 – search and browse tasks

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present the third of three inter‐related experiments investigating the use and usability of e‐books in Higher Education based on experiments conducted at the University of Strathclyde. This study has looked in greater detail at user interactions with e‐books for reference purposes by focusing on searching and browsing tasks using three search tools: back‐of the‐book index (BoBI), table of contents (ToC) and full text search (FTS). Design/methodology/approach – This study was carried out by subject‐specific users and using a between‐subjects approach. The target population was MSc and research students in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences, at the University of Strathclyde and involved a total of 45 responses. Findings – The study found that a BoBI was more efficient compared to a ToC and FTS tool for finding information in an e‐book environment. A BoBI was found to perform the best for accurately finding relevant content in e‐books. The usability evaluation also found that a BoBI was more useful compared to a ToC for finding information in an e‐book environment. Research limitations/implications – The study was focused only on the usability of e‐books, and in particular on retrieval performance, user satisfaction and preferences regarding BoBI, ToC and FTS, and not on other features such as the user interface. The e‐book usability evaluation was constrained in so far as the e‐books used were: non‐fiction; in the domain of information retrieval; e‐books that already had BoBIs with hyperlinks from the BoBI to the text; e‐books that had ToCs with hyperlinks; e‐books that had FTS tools; and e‐books that were available in PDF format. Practical implications – The study is important in gaining a better understanding of the retrieval performance of three search tools (BoBI, ToC and FTS) for browsing for relevant, and searching for specific, information in e‐books. This will be of value for designing better e‐books and access systems. Originality/value – The strengths and novelty of this study are the methodology that was used, the comprehensive inter‐comparison of tools, and the size of the population. The findings have supported empirically – through an assessment of the performances of BoBIs and ToCs – the need for an enhanced library catalogue system in order to improve users’ browsing and searching capabilities for relevant book content.

Modeling an e-learning tool to cultivate critical thinking in students based on information needs and seeking behavior

Critical thinking is one of the main goals of higher education to ensure that students are competent in the future. The growth of information technology and internet access among students is effective factors to improve the instructional approaches for fostering critical thinking in online environments. Although many researchers have studied on cultivating critical thinking, many do not consider the relationship between critical thinking and Information seeking behavior of students in e-learning environments. This paper focuses on the relationship between critical thinking and information seeking behavior of students in e-learning environments and the role of information seeking behavior of students to cultivate critical thinking.

The use of information retrieval tools: A study of computer science postgraduate students

Students may seek information for various reasons such as to understand a specific subject matter or to conduct a research. In this digital age, they may not have a problem to find information. However, they are having problem to find scholarly information that suits their learning needs. This is because they are having difficulties to find the scholarly information that suitable for their learning styles. The objectives of this research are (a) to investigate information retrieval tools that students use to find scholarly information; (b) to compare the tools in terms of access, search techniques, and search facilities and (c) to propose architecture of information retrieval tool for learning needs. Therefore, this research investigates several information retrieval tools such as Online Public Access Catalogues (OPAC), Internet search engine, online databases and digital libraries. Survey questionnaire was conducted on 129 postgraduates students of Faculty of Science Computer and Information Technology, University of Malaya. They were chosen because of their level of education and their proficiency in using IT infrastructure. The quantitative data were analyzed using statistical program SPSS. The result shows that postgraduate students having difficulties in finding information that suitable to their learning style using available information retrieval tools.

Visualizing Quran documents results by stemming semantic speech query

The information visualization results are retrieving lack of information to meet users speech query even though there is presenting information and results in visualization. Hence, in this study, visualization of retrieving relevant documents through cross language information retrieval (CLIR) system needs to across language boundaries, a mechanism for query translation with semantic and stemmers are required well-known as stemming semantic query (SSQ). Therefore, this study is conducted with the purposes to investigate visualization approach against the queries and vice versa using SpaceTree. Furthermore, it is also conducted to investigate the performance of visualization to present normal listing results. The retrieval results however, focus on how SpaceTree is beneficial to represent them in a good manner. Results from the experiments suggest that SpaceTree is most friendly to display results to the users in CLIR. It also found that semantic approach with stemmers contributes to better performance in visualizing more relevant and related Quran document results.

Semantic query with stemmer for Quran documents results

The query-based on the result is lack of limited relevant documents in retrieval results. Therefore, query performance is considered to retrieve more relevant documents across language boundaries by applying semantic and stemmers which are more significant as stemming semantic query (SSQ). Therefore, this study is conducted with the purposes to investigate the integration semantic and stemmers approach against the queries and vice versa. Furthermore, it is also conducted to investigate the performance query based on total retrieve and relevant. The retrieval however, included the irrelevant documents because of the translation polysemy. Results from the experiments suggest that SSQ is most important process in cross language information retrieval (CLIR). It also found that semantic approach with stemmers contributes to better performance in retrieving more relevant and related Quran document results.

Semantic speech query via stemmer for Quran documents results

Speech recognition has provided limited converted speech into text as query for cross language information retrieval (CLIR). Therefore, in this study, speech recognition to be integrated with cross language information retrieval system to investigate the Quran system results performance using semantic and stemmers as stemming semantic spoken query (SSSQ). The query however is based on the speech to be input and converted into text. Therefore, this study is conducted with the purposes to investigate the integration speech, semantic and stemmers approach against the queries and vice versa. Furthermore, it is also conducted to investigate the performance query based on total retrieve and relevant. The retrieval however, included the irrelevant documents because of the translation polysemy. Results from the experiments suggest that SSSQ is most important process in CLIR. It also found that semantic speech approach with stemmers contributes to better approach in using speech instead of keyboard to investigate its performance for Quran document results.