Towards searching as a learning process : A review of current perspectives and future directions <s> Searching to learn <s> Abstract ::: All of the methods currently used to assess information retrieval (IR) systems have limitations in their ability to measure how well users are able to acquire information. We utilized a new approach to assessing information obtained, based on a short-answer test given to senior medical students. Students took the ten-question test and then searched one of two IR systems on the five questions for which they were least certain of their answer Our results showed that pre-searching scores on the test were low but that searching yielded a high proportion of answers with both systems. These methods are able to measure information obtained, and will be used in subsequent studies to assess differences among IR systems. <s> BIB001 </s> Towards searching as a learning process : A review of current perspectives and future directions <s> Searching to learn <s> In this research, we investigated whether a learning process has unique information searching characteristics. The results of this research show that information searching is a learning process with unique searching characteristics specific to particular learning levels. In a laboratory experiment, we studied the searching characteristics of 72 participants engaged in 426 searching tasks. We classified the searching tasks according to Anderson and Krathwohl's taxonomy of the cognitive learning domain. Research results indicate that applying and analyzing, the middle two of the six categories, generally take the most searching effort in terms of queries per session, topics searched per session, and total time searching. Interestingly, the lowest two learning categories, remembering and understanding, exhibit searching characteristics similar to the highest order learning categories of evaluating and creating. Our results suggest the view of Web searchers having simple information needs may be incorrect. Instead, we discovered that users applied simple searching expressions to support their higher-level information needs. It appears that searchers rely primarily on their internal knowledge for evaluating and creating information needs, using search primarily for fact checking and verification. Overall, results indicate that a learning theory may better describe the information searching process than more commonly used paradigms of decision making or problem solving. The learning style of the searcher does have some moderating effect on exhibited searching characteristics. The implication of this research is that rather than solely addressing a searcher's expressed information need, searching systems can also address the underlying learning need of the user. <s> BIB002 </s> Towards searching as a learning process : A review of current perspectives and future directions <s> Searching to learn <s> This paper reports on an exploratory study of how university students perceive and interact with Web search engines compared to Web-based OPACs. A qualitative study was conducted involving sixteen students, eight of whom were first-year undergraduates and eight of whom were graduate students in Library and Information Science. The participants performed searches on Google and on a university OPAC. The interviews and think-afters revealed that while students were aware of the problems inherent in Web searching and of the many ways in which OPACS are more organized, they generally preferred Web searching. The coding of the data suggests that the reason for this preference lies in psychological factors associated with the comparative ease with which search engines can be used, and system and interface factors which made searching the Web much easier and less confusing. As a result of these factors, students were able to approach even the drawbacks of the Web—its clutter of irrelevant pages and the dubious authority of the results—in an enthusiastic and proactive manner, very different from the passive and ineffectual admiration they expressed for the OPAC. The findings suggest that requirements of good OPAC interface design must be aggressively redefined in the face of new, Web-based standards of usability. <s> BIB003 </s> Towards searching as a learning process : A review of current perspectives and future directions <s> Searching to learn <s> Research tools critical for exploratory search success involve the creation of new interfaces that move the process beyond predictable fact retrieval. <s> BIB004 </s> Towards searching as a learning process : A review of current perspectives and future directions <s> Searching to learn <s> This paper reports findings from an exploratory study about how students majoring in humanities and social sciences use the Internet and library resources for research. Using student discussion groups, content analysis, and a student survey, our results suggest students may not be as reliant on public Internet sites as previous research has reported. Instead, students in our study used a hybrid approach for conducting course-related research. A majority of students leveraged both online and offline sources to overcome challenges with finding, selecting, and evaluating resources and gauging professors' expectations for quality research. <s> BIB005 </s> Towards searching as a learning process : A review of current perspectives and future directions <s> Searching to learn <s> This study details the activities and strategies that 11th grade students with high academic abilities used during their information seeking and use to complete class projects in a Persuasive Speech class. The study took place in a suburban high school in Maryland, and participants included 21 junior honors students, their teacher, and their library media specialist. Each student produced a 5–7-minute speech on a self-chosen topic. Conducted in the framework of qualitative research in a constructivist paradigm (E.G. Guba, & Y.S. Lincoln, 1998), the study used data collected from observations, individual interviews, and documents students produced for their projects—concept maps, paragraphs, outlines, and research journals. Interview and observation data were analyzed using the constant comparative method (B. Glaser & A. Strauss, 1967) with the help of QSR NVivo 2 (QSR International Pty Ltd, 2002); students' documents were analyzed manually. The findings show that students' understanding, strategies, and activities during information seeking and use were interactive and serendipitous and that students learned about their topics as they searched. The research suggests that high school honors students in an information-rich environment are especially confident with learning tasks requiring an exploratory mode of learning. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. <s> BIB006 </s> Towards searching as a learning process : A review of current perspectives and future directions <s> Searching to learn <s> Social tagging arose out of the need to organize found content that is worth revisiting. A significant side effect has been the use of social tagging sites as navigational signposts for interesting content. The collective behavior of users who tagged contents seems to offer a good basis for exploratory search interfaces, even for users who are not using social bookmarking sites. In this paper, we present the design of a tag-based exploratory system and detail an experiment in understanding its effectiveness. The tag-based search system allows users to utilize relevance feedback on tags to indicate their interest in various topics, enabling rapid exploration of the topic space. The experiment shows that the system seems to provide a kind of scaffold for users to learn new topics. <s> BIB007 </s> Towards searching as a learning process : A review of current perspectives and future directions <s> Searching to learn <s> As information becomes more ubiquitous and the demands that searchers have on search systems grow, there is a need to support search behaviors beyond simple lookup. Information seeking is the process or activity of attempting to obtain information in both human and technological contexts. Exploratory search describes an information-seeking problem context that is open-ended, persistent, and multifaceted, and information-seeking processes that are opportunistic, iterative, and multitactical. Exploratory searchers aim to solve complex problems and develop enhanced mental capacities. Exploratory search systems support this through symbiotic human-machine relationships that provide guidance in exploring unfamiliar information landscapes. Exploratory search has gained prominence in recent years. There is an increased interest from the information retrieval, information science, and human-computer interaction communities in moving beyond the traditional turn-taking interaction model support d by major Web search engines, and toward support for human intelligence amplification and information use. In this lecture, we introduce exploratory search, relate it to relevant extant research, outline the features of exploratory search systems, discuss the evaluation of these systems, and suggest some future directions for supporting exploratory search. Exploratory search is a new frontier in the search domain and is becoming increasingly important in shaping our future world. Table of Contents: Introduction / Defining Exploratory Search / Related Work / Features of Exploratory Search Systems / Evaluation of Exploratory Search Systems / Future Directions and concluding Remarks <s> BIB008 </s> Towards searching as a learning process : A review of current perspectives and future directions <s> Searching to learn <s> We analyzed how effort in searching is associated with search output and task outcome. In a field study, we examined how students' search effort for an assigned learning task was associated with precision and relative recall, and how this was associated to the quality of learning outcome. The study subjects were 41 medical students writing essays for a class in medicine. Searching in Medline was part of their assignment. The data comprised students' search logs in Medline, their assessment of the usefulness of references retrieved, a questionnaire concerning the search process, and evaluation scores of the essays given by the teachers. Pearson correlation was calculated for answering the research questions. Finally, a path model for predicting task outcome was built. We found that effort in the search process degraded precision but improved task outcome. There were two major mechanisms reducing precision while enhancing task outcome. Effort in expanding Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) terms within search sessions and effort in assessing and exploring documents in the result list between the sessions degraded precision, but led to better task outcome. Thus, human effort compensated bad retrieval results on the way to good task outcome. Findings suggest that traditional effectiveness measures in information retrieval should be complemented with evaluation measures for search process and outcome. <s> BIB009
This perspective starts with the notion that information is the basis for human learning in today's information-rich environments. It is associated with the common practice of information searching related to performing learning tasks in formal education contexts as well as work-life or everyday life. The majority of previous studies have focused on students' web searching behaviour and experience for their academic pursuits. It is widely known that web search engines are students' starting point for academic pursuits given such engines' speed, convenience and ease of use BIB005  BIB003 . Students' mental model of search systems is a 'simple type-and-click operation' BIB006 . Several researchers have looked at when and how learning occurs in the search process for learning tasks. Vakkari et al.  examined relations between graduate students' problem stages in the course of writing their master's thesis proposals and the information sought, choice of search terms and relevance assessment. His study showed that students' level of knowledge about their topic predicts their ability to express search terms. According to his study, when students know less about the topic, they are likely to enter fewer, broader and more vague search terms as their queries. As Vakkari's study participants proceeded with their research process, the types of information sought and relevance criteria changed: the use of background and theoretical information declined and the importance of information types declined as predictors of relevance. More recently, Vakkari and Huuskonen BIB009 studied medical students' search behaviour and efforts with respect to a course assignment that required them to use the OVID-Medline biomedical search service. For this study, the authors distinguished search output (the products delivered by a system) and task outcome (the benefits the system produces). They found that effort in the search process degraded precision but improved task outcome. The findings of their study indicate that traditional effectiveness measures in information retrieval, such as recall and precision, need to be complemented with evaluation measures for search process and outcome. A few studies have investigated learning as an outcome of searching. Hersh et al. BIB001 used a quiz approach to assess how well medical students were able to answer clinical questions after they used an information retrieval system. Their results showed that pre-searching scores on the test were low, but that searching enabled students to answer a higher proportion of questions. Based on the results, they proposed various methods as viable alternatives to measuring recall and precision. In Kammer et al.'s BIB007 study, participants were asked to formulate keywords and write a short summary to assess learning. The number of keywords submitted by participants was counted and their written summaries were assessed through topic coverage (the number of reasonable topics covered) and topic quality (each topic was rated on its quality). Jansen et al. BIB002 investigated Bloom's learning theory to characterize the information search process. Their study addressed two research questions: 'Are searching episodes learning events?' and 'Are searching characteristics with Anderson and Krathwohl's  taxonomy affected by the searcher's learning style?' (pp. 647-648). They analysed search tasks collected from participants and found that applying and analysing in the learning taxonomy take the most search effort in terms of queries per session, topics searched per session and total time searching. In conclusion, Jansen et al. claim that a learning theory can improve the information search process more than traditional paradigms of decisionmaking or problem-solving. Over the past decade, exploratory search has emerged as an alternative perspective to characterize searching to foster learning and investigation BIB008 . A fundamental idea of exploratory search is that the primary function of the search system should not be to provide search results. Instead, it should be to help users explore, overcome uncertainty, and, eventually, learn  . Exploratory search would be a pertinent search strategy for searchers who are willing to learn through search because exploratory searchers utilize a combination of search and browsing behaviour to navigate, understand and better interpret the meaning of retrieved information  . Exploratory searches are characterized by multiple iterations and search results that require more cognitive processing than look-ups BIB004 . Exploratory searchers spend more time reading, comparing, and making qualitative judgments of information. In the exploratory model, learning is used in the general sense of developing new knowledge, including self-directed lifelong learning and professional learning as well as learning for academic pursuits BIB004 . Wilson and Wilson  were the first researchers to attempt to develop techniques to measure how much someone has learned as a result of exploratory search. Using Bloom's revised taxonomy  , they developed three levels of measures for depth of learning: Quality of facts (D-Qual), Interpretation of data into statements (D-Intrp), and Use of critique (D-Crit). D-Qual focused on the quality of recalled facts by their usefulness, covering the 'remembering' and 'understanding' levels of Bloom's revised taxonomy. D-Intrp assessed how students synthesized facts and statements to draw conclusions and deductions (Bloom's analysing). D-Crit covered Bloom's concept of 'evaluating' by identifying statements that compared facts or used facts to raise more questions. The results of their study revealed that a 'one-size-fitsall' approach cannot be used to accurately measure the degree of learning because many variables may be confounded by other factors such as the length of the summaries provided by participants and their levels of prior knowledge.