Marita


 

Serial Failure

 

Bowen, Jennifer & others (Jan 2004). Serial failure. Charleston Advisor, 5(3), Retrieved Mar 13, 2008, from http://tinyurl.com/28jazu

 

This article from the University of Rochester Libraries begins by describing a simple usability study of an academic library web site. Randomly choose four students and individually observe them at a set task: find a newspaper article on affirmative action. Watch them fail, or rather, watch your website fail.

 

The authors describe their case study of trial, rejig website and retrial under the heading: "From abject failure to nearly abject failure".

 

Users want easy searching, a la Google, and few have the patience or motivation to struggle with complicated, and non-uniform, databases.

 

Although BI (bibliographic instruction) works, it is "ultimately powerless in an environment in which people expect to use Web products proficiently with no training whatever."

 

The answers (see the article for more detail) are:

 

The article describes improvements made to the library web page, including change of terminology (databases button becomes "find articles") and prominence (adding button to front page), simplifying and subject grouping database lists, using metasearching where possible, developing simplified interfaces where possible (some inhouse and some working with providers). Whilst each of these did improve usage the overall effect was seen as negligible. (This was all done over several years.)

 

Visit the University of Rochester River Campus Libraries home page to see how it looks today. You need to log in to search but you can see the way searching is structured at different levels.

 

Thoughts:

 

 

Skype Meeting 11th Feb 08

 

I really enjoyed the chat especially the mix of topics that came up. Thought I'd put up a few references that resulted from this discussion while still fresh.

 

iPod use

Julie's idea was: "...to investigate if listening to music with earphones while students are studying is really beneficial to their studies."

 

There is an article in T.H.E.Journal called What Students Want :: Leave Me Alone...I’m Socializing (March 2007). This reports a survey/interviews of three age groups about their experience of using technology. Listening devices were liked because they satisfied the need to be left alone and were perceived to change mood for the better. This is not hard research for the project, but gives some interesting youth perspective.

 

In a Sept 2006 blog entry teacher Elona Hartjes quotes from a workplace survey (she gives details but I couldn't source it quickly) which showed that workers find listening to personal music players improves job satisfaction:

 

"The effect of music was the highest among younger workers, with 90 per cent of those 18 to 24 and 89 per cent of those 30 to 39 saying it boosted job satisfaction."

 

The article goes on to relate this to classroom experience. (Listening to music helps students be more productive in the classroom)

 

Third Space

This is a concept which is referred to in the research background to guided inquiry as discussed in Carol Kuhlthau's recent publication. See Guided Inquiry on Ning for details (didn't know about that till this minute when I searched for a link to the book). The following article was quoted in her bib. and is a case study of interactions in a particular classroom. Quoting a little from the first page of the article:

 

"An analysis of the everyday activity of classrooms, an analysis of the script of the classroom community, and a discourse analysis of the face-to-face interaction of the classroom participants will show how who gets to learn and what is learned is connected to the social relationships constructed in classrooms. These analyses will also demonstrate how power lies in these constructed social relationships, not solely in the individual or in a monolithic system of societal reproduction. Thus, while the classroom mirrors the larger societal structures and power relationships (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1993; Freire & Macedo, 1987; Giroux, 1988), the construction of the classroom, like the construction of society, is a dynamic system of relationships and structures."

 

Script, Counterscript, and Underlife in the Classroom Gutierrez, Kris and others, Harvard Educational Review, v65 n3 p445-71 Fall 1995. (You will need to source this through an academic database - the link is to the ERIC abstract.)

 

This tied in nicely with some research I came to from a completely different direction - see The Hidden Lives of Learners for details.

 

I just thought that this reading added to my understanding of the context of action research, and both are excellent examples of a certain type of study which is infrequently reported.

 

 

 

 

 

Duck with a Purpose

 

 

I wanted to imortalise my duck, who turned out to be amazingly unphotogenic (she looks better than this) but thought that in this shot she looked at least purposeful. Our inaugural dinner gave much food for thought (pun not intended) and I am now channeling my sense of purpose through Ms Duck and seeking an authentic research purpose.