Using the user's mental model to guide the integration of information space into information need

Charles Cole and John E. Leide

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2003, vol. 54, issue 1, 39-46

Abstract: The study reported here tested the efficacy of an information retrieval system output summary and visualization scheme for undergraduates taking a Vietnam War history who were in Kuhlthau's Stage 3 of researching a history essay. The visualization scheme consisted of (a) the undergraduate's own visualization of his or her essay topic, drawn by the student on the bottom half of a sheet of paper, and (b) a visualization of the information space (determined by index term counting) on the top‐half of the same page. To test the visualization scheme, students enrolled in a Vietnam War history course were randomly assigned to either the visualization scheme group, who received a high recall search output, or the nonvisualization group, who received a high precision search output. The dependent variable was the mark awarded the essay by the course instructor. There was no significant difference between the mean marks for the two groups. We were pleasantly surprised with this result given the bad reputation of high recall as a practical search strategy. We hypothesize that a more pro‐active visualization system is needed that takes the student through the process of using the visualization scheme, including steps that induce student cognition about task–subject objectives.

Date: 2003
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.10172

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jamist:v:54:y:2003:i:1:p:39-46

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://doi.org/10.1002/(ISSN)1532-2890

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology from Association for Information Science & Technology
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().