Beyond the search process – Exploring group members’ information behavior in context

Subject structure of the research area on collaborative information behaviour

Purpose

The principal aim of the present study was to identify and model the subject structure of the research area on collaborative information behaviour (CIB).

Design/methodology/approach

A qualitative, inductive and exploratory approach was adopted, and the method of thematic analysis was used. This study was based on the analysis of 79 publications selected from the Library, Information Science and Technology Abstracts (LISTA) database in April 2019.

Findings

Collaborative and collective information behaviours were differentiated, and the subject structure of the CIB research area was identified to contain collaborative activities oriented to both information access and content, their various conditions, means of conducting, experiences of selected communities and metascientific research on the area itself.

Research limitations/implications

The limitations result primarily from relying on the research material selected from the database (LISTA) focussed mainly on the issues of library and information science.

Originality/value

This study contributes by proposing an original model of the CIB research area representing its subject structure and providing a coherent list of subjects of interest to CIB researchers. Hopefully, it will also contribute to the harmonisation of terminology related to this research area and thus facilitate communication between CIB researchers and accelerate the cumulative development of scientific knowledge on CIB.

Information seeking abroad: an everyday-life study of international students

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how four international students at a Danish university cope with their study-related and everyday information needs, behaviorally as well as affectively, and how their information seeking blends with their cross-cultural adaptation.

Design/methodology/approach

Each of the four participants contributed ten diaries and took part in three interviews during the first semester of their stay.

Findings

International students’ information needs and seeking behavior are shaped by their host university but also by cross-cultural, personal and situational issues. While the cross-cultural issues set international students apart from domestic students, the personal and situational issues create individual differences that call for more individually tailored support. The studied international students lacked information about both study-related and everyday issues. These two types of issues were intertwined and experienced as equally stressful. However, study-related information needs were more important, whereas everyday information needs were more difficult to resolve. In addition, participants tended to feel on their own when it came to finding needed information, but studying abroad also had elements of personal growth in meeting life’s challenges.

Research limitations/implications

More participants are needed to investigate how international students’ information seeking evolves over time.

Originality/value

This study contributes detailed information about international students’ study-related and everyday information seeking during their first semester abroad. The study has implications for everyday-life studies of international students’ information behavior and the international classroom in general.

Empirical studies of collaborative information seeking: a review of methodological issues

Purpose

Information seeking is often performed in collaborative contexts. The research into such collaborative information seeking (CIS) has been proceeding since the 1990s but lacks methodological discussions. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and discuss methodological issues in existing CIS studies.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors systematically review 69 empirical CIS studies.

Findings

The review shows that the most common methods of data collection are lab experiments (43 percent), observation (19 percent) and surveys (16 percent), that the most common methods of data analysis are description (33 percent), statistical testing (29 percent) and content analysis (19 percent) and that CIS studies involve a fairly even mix of novice, intermediate and specialist participants. However, the authors also find that CIS research is dominated by exploratory studies, leaves it largely unexplored in what ways the findings of a study may be specific to the particular study setting, appears to assign primacy to precision at the expense of generalizability, struggles with investigating how CIS activities extend over time and provides data about behavior to a larger extent than about reasons, experiences and especially outcomes.

Research limitations/implications

The major implication of this review is its identification of the need for a shared model to which individual CIS studies can contribute in a cumulative manner. To support the development of such a model, the authors discuss a model of the core CIS process and a model of the factors that trigger CIS.

Originality/value

This study assesses the current state of CIS research, provides guidance for future CIS studies and aims to inspire further methodological discussion.

Collaborative information searching as learning in academic group work

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore users’ learning in the collaborative information search process when they conduct an academic task as a group.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper presents a longitudinal study for a three-month period on an actual task. The participants, who were undergraduate students, needed to write a research proposal in three months to apply for funding for a research project, including a three-hour experiment.

Findings

The results show that undergraduates’ learning in the collaborative search process for academic group work included knowledge reconstruction, tuning, and assimilation. Their understanding of the topic concepts improved through the process, and their attitudes became more optimistic. Besides, the learning in the collaborative information search process also enhanced participants’ skills in communication, research, information search, and collaboration. To improve learning outcomes, professional and appropriate academic resources are required, as well as effective division of labor, positive sharing behaviors, and use of collaborative systems.

Practical implications

The future development of collaborative information search systems should focus on the needs of academic research and support for elements such as instant communication and knowledge sharing.

Originality/value

This paper contributes to research into searching as learning by understanding undergraduates’ collaborative search behavior for writing a proposal.

Collaborative information seeking and expertise seeking: different discourses about similar issues

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast research on collaborative information seeking (CIS) and expertise seeking (EXS) to identify focal themes, blind spots, and possibilities for cross-fertilization.

Design/methodology/approach

Existing research was reviewed. The review consisted of a content analysis of 70 (CIS) and 72 (EXS) studies with respect to the context, scope, process, and setting of CIS and EXS, supplemented with a bibliometric analysis of the references in the reviewed studies.

Findings

In CIS, the context is a group of actors collaborating on a shared task. In EXS, the information need is held by an individual but resolved by consulting other people. While the typical scope of EXS studies is source selection, CIS studies mostly concern the consultation of the sources and the use of the obtained information. CIS and EXS studies also attend differentially to the information-seeking process. Only 4 percent of the references in the reviewed studies are cited in both CIS and EXS research. The author concludes that, at present, CIS and EXS are different discourses about similar issues.

Research limitations/implications

Increased interaction between CIS and EXS will advance research in both areas and prevent duplication of effort. Topics for future research are identified. It should be noted that the findings are limited to the 142 studies reviewed.

Originality/value

By analyzing CIS in the context of EXS, and vice versa, this study provides a fresh look at the information-seeking research that attends to collaboration.

The embeddedness of collaborative information seeking in information culture

Professionally, people often conduct their work in settings containing a range of different collaborative situations and work practices in which people handle information and work activities. Still, work tasks are usually considered and perceived as individual activities although the technology and the characteristics of the tasks require collaborative and cooperative handling processes. This viewpoint still produces technologies that, in general, assume individual information management and decision-making. Based on previous research on information culture (IC) and collaborative information seeking (CIS), this paper proposes an integrated framework where both environmental (cultural) as well as collaborative aspects of organisational information behaviour are present. This kind of framework would be useful in studies looking into how information is retrieved, how information is organised and managed, and how information is used as a resource in collaborative settings. It gives a more holistic perspective to information use and practices in organisations where culture, collaboration and awareness are especially brought to common attention for effective information management in organisations.

The Impacts of Mutual Collaboration Experience and Domain Knowledge Levels on CAIS Behavior: An Experimental Study

Some studies have investigated participants’ information-seeking practices from the perspective of mutual collaboration experience and level of domain knowledge. This study provides insights into collaborative academic information-seeking (CAIS) behaviour. The article explores whether groups with different levels of domain knowledge and mutual collaboration experiences had different CAIS behaviour. It also asked whether domain knowledge level or mutual collaboration experience had an impact on CAIS behaviour. We describe a user study with 18 participants in nine pairs with an experimental collaborative information-seeking tool, the participants categorized into three types of groups: high domain knowledge level and few mutual collaboration experiences (Group 1), low domain knowledge level and many mutual collaboration experiences (Group 2), and no domain knowledge level and no mutual collaboration experience (Group 3). Quantitative and qualitative data analysis were used to analyse the user data collected. The results showed that compared with members of Group 3, participants in Groups 1 and 2 had a better understanding of search tasks and were aware of the ways of completing the tasks successfully. They did not depend on the information-retrieval system when constructing search queries, and adopted diverse cooperation strategies. They were more likely to recommend information to their partners. Domain knowledge had greater impact on CAIS behaviour than collaboration experience. The findings help us to understand social interactions among community members and help CAIS researchers to understand user interactions and inform information system designers as they design collaborative systems to facilitate social communication in the information-seeking process. Our work was limited by the group types we chose and the small group size, which could affect the generalizability of our findings and should be addressed in future studies.

Collaborative information seeking in student group projects

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to gain a better understanding of the collaborative information seeking (CIS) behaviors of students conducting authentic group work projects, and the features of a collaborative search system that are most useful to these students.

Design/methodology/approach

An exploratory study was conducted with 41 participants in ten groups working on an in class, for-credit group project assignment utilizing a collaborative search system. Quantitative and qualitative data were gathered on the everyday search practices of students over the course of the group project, along with quality scores for the sources found.

Findings

Results showed that student behavior during their CIS related to the quality of their search outcomes, as the effective and efficient searchers found better quality sources. Students’ pre-task attitudes and experiences toward group work also relate to the quality of their search outcomes. Student feedback demonstrated the importance of making collaborative search tools convenient, lightweight, and easy to use.

Practical implications

These findings may be useful to researchers designing and studying the effectiveness of collaborative search tools, and to instructors planning to incorporate group projects into their classes.

Originality/value

In this paper, the authors document the authentic behaviors and attitudes of students conducting group projects in an classroom setting, and offer specific recommendations for developers of collaborative search systems. These findings provide greater context for CIS research into the collaborative search behaviors of students conducting group work projects.

Exploring collaborative work among graduate students through the C5 model of collaboration: A diary study

Collaborative work among students, while an important topic of inquiry, needs further treatment as we still lack the knowledge regarding obstacles that students face, the strategies they apply, and the relations among personal and group aspects. This article presents a diary study of 54 master’s students conducting group projects across four semesters. A total of 332 diary entries were analysed using the C5 model of collaboration that incorporates elements of communication, contribution, coordination, cooperation and collaboration. Quantitative and qualitative analyses show how these elements relate to one another for students working on collaborative projects. It was found that face-to-face communication related positively with satisfaction and group dynamics, whereas online chat correlated positively with feedback and closing the gap. Managing scope was perceived to be the most common challenge. The findings suggest the varying affordances and drawbacks of different methods of communication, collaborative work styles and the strategies of group members.

Undergraduate information behaviors in thesis writing: A study using the Information Search Process model

The study investigates whether information-seeking behavior models and theories obtained in previous research are applicable to more complex tasks. It also aims to gather students’ opinions on the importance and helpfulness of various traditional and online information sources in their thesis-writing process. This study would help to develop a better understanding of the roles and impacts of these information sources in the current networked academic infrastructure. Inspired by the Information Search Process model, we divided the process into six stages and conducted three separate surveys that covered students’ feelings, thoughts and actions, as well as other important factors that might affect their behaviors in each of the stages. Our study shows that both the feelings and thoughts of students changed during the different stages of the process, and that they were generally consistent with the descriptions in the Information Search Process model. The study indicates that it is beneficial to use the Information Search Process model as the starting point for studying the student thesis-writing processes. As the outcome of the study, we ultimately proposed a multi-stage model for Chinese undergraduate students’ thesis-writing process.

Students’ collaborative inquiry – Relation to approaches to studying and instructional intervention

In order to develop suitable pedagogical methods for inquiry based learning we need an increased understanding of factors that influence students’ work in inquiry assignments. The aim of this study was to investigate how high school students’ ways to work in a collaborative source-based writing assignment was influenced by their individual approach to studying and the teacher’s instructions and guidance in the class. The respondents were 53 high school students who filled out a questionnaire regarding their work on the source based assignment and the OPPI test of their approaches to studying. A factor analysis revealed three work patterns: a collaborative, a labour intense and a subject oriented. The results showed that the collaborative pattern was related to instructional differences, while a subject oriented work pattern was typical for students with a deep approach regardless of instruction. Instructional differences and study approaches also influenced degree of challenges in the project and, to a certain extent, learning experiences. The findings show a complex interplay between personal preferences and instructional interventions in forming students’ paths through source based writing assignments.

Are social networking sites information sources? Informational purposes of high-school students in using SNSs

Although social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter are widely used by teenagers, to date, research has focused on their social uses. This research sought to investigate the ways in which high school students (15–19 years) use such sites in order to find information. It highlights the importance of considering how young people may use social networking sites for everyday life information as well as for academic and school-oriented information. Findings from a web-based survey of students from the UK, France, Thailand and Denmark show that social networking sites are information sources for most teenagers, especially for information related to social activities. Although academic information seeking was not among the most common reasons for using them, the findings indicate that they are used by many students for such purposes, as well as for everyday life information seeking.

Vers une orientation translittéracique des modèles d’information Literacy?

Cette contribution vise à interroger les évolutions possibles des modèles « prescriptifs » de la recherche d’information au vu des apports conceptuels de la notion de translittératie au champ de l’information literacy. Y sont abordées les transformations des référentiels de maîtrise de l’information traditionnels ainsi que deux propositions inédites : le modèle américain Metaliteracy et le modèle anglais InFlow (information flow). Ces deux modèles ne se revendiquent pas explicitement de l’approche translittératique même si des points de jonction forts peuvent être repérés qui renouvellent en profondeur les dispositifs de formation à l’information ainsi que l’arrière-plan théorique qui les sous-tend.

The interplay of affective and cognitive factors in information seeking and use

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to elaborate the conceptual picture of the relationships between the affective and cognitive factors in information seeking and use.

Design/methodology/approach

– Conceptual analysis focusing on the ways in which the affective and cognitive factors and their interplay are approached in the Information Search Process model developed by Carol Kuhlthau, and the Social-Biological Information Technology model elaborated by Diane Nahl.

Findings

– Kuhlthau’s model approaches the cognitive factors (thoughts) and affective factors (feelings) and affective-cognitive factors (mood) as integral constituents of the six-stage information search process. Thoughts determine the valence of feelings (positive or negative), while mood opens or closes the range of possibilities in a search. Nahl’s taxonomic model defines the affective and cognitive factors as components of a biologically determined process serving the ends of adaptation to information ecology. The interplay of the above factors is conceptualized by focusing on their mutual roles in the cognitive and affective appraisal of information.

Research limitations/implications

– The findings are based on the comparison of two models only.

Originality/value

– So far, information scientists have largely ignored the study of the interplay between affective and cognitive factors in information seeking and use. The findings indicate that the examination of these factors together rather than separately holds a good potential to elaborate the holistic picture of information seeking and use.

Information literacy-related practices in the legal workplace: The applicability of Kuhlthau’s model to the legal profession

This article examines evidence of information literacy in the context of legal education and legal practice in Nigeria. It seeks to explore the application of Kuhlthau’s Information Search Process model as the dominant framework used in investigating issues of uncertainty and task complexity in a study conducted among graduate lawyers in Nigeria. The article provides an analysis of the empirical validity of the model in investigating the connection between learning, experience and the development of expertise among novice practitioners in the legal workplace in Nigeria. Data were obtained using quantitative and qualitative approaches while a case study method was employed for the study. Based on the findings of the study, the article offers insight into the role of the cognitive and affective dimensions in information seeking and the implications they have on issues of curriculum design, teaching methods and learning experiences in the context of legal education and practice in Nigeria.

IRS, information services and LIS research – a reminder about affect and the affective paradigm … and a question

Purpose

– A previous contribution argues in favour of a balance in emphasis between information communication technology (ICT); information retrieval systems (IRS) such as databases, library catalogues, repositories, Google Scholar, digital libraries, portals, search engines; and the users of these systems. This contribution aims to pursue the need to consider affect and an affective paradigm more prominently in the design, evaluation, promotion and use of IRS and library and information services (LIS).

Design/methodology/approach

– The contribution is written against the background of research in information behaviour, user studies, systems design, and information literacy.

Findings

– Although the literature from LIS and other disciplines notes an affective paradigm or even paradigms, it is not strongly positioned compared with the systems and cognitive paradigms. A growing body of research and work practices such as information representation and tagging, and information skills training, is taking a slant towards affect and emotion. The question, however, is whether current work is sufficient to argue for an affective paradigm complementary to the systems, cognitive and socio-cognitive paradigms, and how an affective paradigm should be introduced in training/education for LIS.

Originality/value

– Although there are a number of publications on affect and emotion, and references to an affective paradigm, this contribution is aimed at stimulating thought on whether we should prominently introduce the affective paradigm into LIS curricula as preparation for adding more value to IRS, library services, and in dealing with emotion-laden jobs, and if so, how.

Les compétences informationnelles des étudiants à l’heure du Web 2.0 : proposition d’un modèle pour baliser les formations

Dans notre société dite du savoir, il est plus important que jamais de former les étudiants aux compétences informationnelles. Par contre, plusieurs universités se limitent trop souvent aux modèles plus classiques de ces compétences, comme celui de l’Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL 2000), qui ne prennent que trop peu en compte les outils et les possibilités du Web 2.0, avec lesquels sont pourtant si familiers les étudiants. Ce texte présente puis critique les modèles plus traditionnels afin de proposer par la suite un nouveau modèle des compétences informationnelles bonifié et à jour. Nous nous efforcerons de montrer en quoi notre modèle allie à la fois les forces des modèles plus classiques issus de la bibliothéconomie et des sciences de l’information, mais également les avantages et les défis du Web  2.0.

Spatial context in collaborative information seeking

Space and time are considered the most important dimensions for studying systems and methods that support collaboration in information seeking. Several investigations have provided us with insights into people’s preferences and experiences relating to these two dimensions, but there is a lack of empirical evidence. A user study is presented, involving 60 subjects in 30 pairs, in which the experience and performance of users are compared while performing an information-seeking task in three different spatially defined collaboration settings: (1) working at the same workstation, (2) working in the same room at different workstations, and (3) working in different rooms. The results show significant differences among the experimental conditions, indicating the impact of space on collaboration. The pros and cons of different spatial set-ups are derived from an extensive analysis that uses several traditional information retrieval measures such as precision and recall, as well as unconventional assessments involving coverage and diversity.