Chapter 1

Introduction

The environment in which research is disseminated and used is undergoing a radical change and the task of modern HEIs is to better understand this change and support new ways of accessing content. It is now beyond doubt that the internet has revolutionised the way that research content is discovered, accessed and used. Content which once needed specialist skills to find is now widely available and searches which once took days of painstaking work can now be done in a matter of seconds. Increasingly, learners and new teachers’ needs are defined by their capacity to differentiate information: to recognise what is and what is not research content, to sort out the good from the bad, the useful from the merely relevant. The internet also appears to have had an impact on the way that research content is used in the real world. Many universities have invested heavily in learning spaces designed to facilitate the kind of social interaction that the internet promotes. Networks – online and offline – are increasingly a part of the way that the modern world evaluates information, including research content. Yet all this presumes that modern users will best know how to find their way in this new information environment, that they have the skills to find the right databases, enter the right search terms, to discover the most appropriate research content for their teaching and learning and use it in the most appropriate way.

This study was commissioned by JISC in 2008 and was conducted over four months starting in January 2009. The aims of the study were to answer the following questions, with users of research content defined as ‘learners, as graduate teaching assistants or as others for whom the research environment may not be familiar’:

| |
|• how do users of research content discover the existence of research content which may be useful in |
|teaching and learning? |
|• how do they assess whether particular content will be relevant to their needs? |
|• how do they access the content they feel to be useful? |
|• what problems do they face in using research content in a learning or teaching situation? |
|• what could be done to make their use of research content easier? |
|• how do they use the research content they discover? |
|• do they differentiate between formal, peer-reviewed content and other content they discover through |
|the internet? |
|• do they use content from undergraduate or masters’ dissertations as well as doctoral theses? |
|• do they use student-generated ‘research’ content on wikis or web-sites? |

The study was led by the Centre for Research-informed Teaching at the University of Central Lancashire. The Principal Investigator was Stuart Hampton-Reeves and the full team included: Claire Mashiter, Jonathan Westaway, Helen Hewertson, Peter Lumsden, Helen Day, and Anna Hart. Heather Conboy and Jeremy Spencer acted as consultants. The project was overseen by a Steering Group chaired by John O’Donoghue.

Methodology
The study had five elements to it:

| • A literature review |
|• A general survey |
|• Discipline and institution-themed Focus Groups |
|• Recordings of student searches |
|• Case Studies based on semi-structured interviews |

These studies were conducted over four institutions. The main basis for this research was the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), where the majority of case studies and focus group sessions took place. UCLan is a large metropolitan university with an emerging research culture, a strong research-informed teaching ethos and a widening participation mission. At UCLan, we structured the research into discipline areas in order to see what common themes emerged from students from different disciplines. Because the university sector is very diverse, we also conducted focus groups at three other universities. The identities of these universities have been kept confidential for this report to protect the identities of those sampled, but all three are English HEIs from different places in the sector. They are, briefly: The final report contains findings from all five elements and synthesises broad conclusions. The final aim of the research is to make general recommendations for improving the experience of users of research content who may not be as familiar with the research environment as academics are. To that end, the focus of the research has been to look for common themes rather than highlight diversities, though these are noted too when relevant. Conforming to best practice in ethical research, all participants were made fully aware of the purpose of the research. None of the students were interviewed by a member of staff who had a connection with their teaching team and all were asked for their written consent before research was conducted. Only the students who participated in the survey had an incentive to participate (in the form of a prize draw which each student had a 0.01% of winning). We broke the use of research content into 4 main areas: how research content is discovered, how it is assessed by the user, how it is accessed (including obstacles to access), and how users differentiate different kinds of research.

The study also explored typical institutional and disciplinary contexts for the use of research content. The research was qualitative and aimed to capture a range of different usages which can be correlated against different disciplinary areas and institutional levels. For the purposes of this study, research content is defined as any knowledge that has been created for dissemination which has been validated through a recognised peer-review process. In order to fully evaluate the understanding of a learner or teacher unfamiliar with the research environment, we also broadened our definition of content to include non-peer reviewed content as well since an important part of this study was to determine the current level of understanding amongst users of different kinds of information.

A recurring theme of the study was the emphasis that users place on accessibility of research content over its academic authority. That is to say, we explored the steps students take to find research content, which content they use most often and in the most significant ways, and whether this usage correlates to the research content’s accessibility. For example, we wanted to find out whether research content that has academic authority is used more extensively than research content which is highly ranked by an internet search engine. Or is relevance (regardless of questions of accessibility and authority) more important? The research also looked at the obstacles users face in using research: obstacles could be technological, epistemological and/or institutional.
Literature Review
The literature review was conducted by Westaway, Mashiter and Hampton-Reeves and provides a discursive and theoretical underpinning for the analysis of surveys and focus groups.
General Survey. The purpose of the survey was to capture a wide range of responses to the study’s core questions. In designing the survey, we took into account the need for reliable, nuanced data but balanced this with the equally demanding need to engage students who may be unfamiliar with the way that HEIs traditionally distinguish research content from teaching content. The survey was published online using the tools provided by Smart Survey which also offers sophisticated analytical tools. As an incentive for participation, students were entered into a draw to win one of seven £50 Amazon vouchers.

The main question that the survey asked was: how do you use research content? There then follow a number of sub-questions about identifying, assessing and accessing content. The target number for the survey was 400 students - we achieved this target and closed the survey when it reached 429.

Focus Groups
We conducted 7 focus groups organised as follows:
The aim of the focus groups was to establish a range of views on the following questions:
Each focus group was facilitated by one of the team (usually one with sensitivity to the disciplines under investigation). Mashiter was also present at all focus groups to ensure that there was a common link. All focus group sessions started with an exercise designed to capture how students instinctively start to research a topic. We wanted a way of measuring how accurately students speak about their encounters with the research environment, especially as many of the terms and conventions are likely to be unfamiliar to them. All students took the same exercise, which was designed to be relevant to all disciplines and institutions and was, quite simply: ‘How many publications can you find by one of your tutors in 15 minutes?’ We recorded their searches using Adobe Connect (seeking permission from students to make the recordings). After the exercise was completed, the facilitator asked the students what they would have done differently if they had had more time to complete the exercise (see Appendix for links to these recordings and our analysis of them).

Case Studies
Case studies were developed through extended, semi-structured interviews. All names used in this report have been changed to protect the identities of the participants

Limitations
This project was conducted over four months including time for survey design and writing up. This inevitably means that we have captured the student experience at a particular moment in the academic cycle - although a highly appropriate one as many students were in the midst of assignments and dissertation research. Nevertheless this research represents a snap-shot profile of user experience which could and should be assesed by long-range research. In particular, we would like to analyse trends in the use of new technologies, particularly social networking, to see if there are emerging paradigms that need to be taken into account.

The sample for both the survey and the focus groups tended to be self-selecting. Future studies would be advised to look for ways to capture the views of other students and users, particularly those who are struggling with assessments.

Although the institutions surveyed represent a cross-section of the sector, it may not capture the full diversity of higher education either within the sector or even in institutions. In particular, a regionally-based study of HEIs in Scotland and Wales would be useful to balance our findings.

1. How students discover and access research content
In this section, we discuss research on the disciplinary contexts for research, the changing role of the tutor in helping students to discover research content and the evolving nature of the research environment.

1.1 Disciplinary contexts
According to current research, the way students discover, access and use research content is largely shaped by conventions within their subject discipline. This is a point particularly developed by Rowlands in a number of studies, which argue that: ‘it is impossible to make generalizations about scholarly information behaviour that transcend discipline’ (2007, 391) and that: ‘book discovery is very highly structured, with gender, subject discipline, and academic status offering powerful predictors of certain underlying behavioural strategies’ (2008)
3). These findings echoed those of MacDonald, who discovered that: students need to be able to comprehend the “framework” of the discipline so that they can form appropriate questions and evaluate the results of their searches. This implies that students will only be competent information handlers when they have some basic understanding of the discipline (2001, 431).
A number of studies in the field bear out the same basic point: disciplines provide frameworks for knowledge and set standards for the discovery of research content which vary considerably from discipline to discipline. Do students then find it hard to research outside the conventions of their discipline? This is the findings of studies conducted by Roberts (2004) and Gannon-Leary (2006). MacDonald finds that students on multidisciplinary courses often struggle with the competing demands of disciplines: most students were required to read an unfamiliar style of writing, associated with one or other of these disciplines. There is some evidence to suggest that the genre of the discipline previously studied by students may also have influenced their success (MacDonald 2001, 428).

Disciplinary differences shape attitudes to the way different types of research content are valued within the research community. Citing Talja and Maula (2003), Armstrong and Norton note ‘the degree to which academics still use print journals varies with academic discipline’ and conclude that ‘disciplinary differences were found consistently in studies that looked at use of resources’ and go on to cite a range of studies including Bronthronet al. 2003 and Tenopir 2003.

1.2 Role of the tutor
The role of the tutor remains fundamental to setting the environment for the use and discovery of research content. In a recent study, Nicholas and Rowlands found that traditional reading lists remain the main way in which students gain knowledge about their subject area (Nicholas and Rowlands 2008, 327). However, the traditional role of the tutor in framing students’ use of research content may be diminishing as more and more students will go to the internet first before consulting tutors or course bibliographies. Nicholas and Rowlands found that students tend to economise by not purchasing the books that they have been recommended to read. Some students are also charged by their own University for coursepacks of research content. A study in the US found that sometimes the cost of these coursepacks rivals that of the textbooks, but they have no resale value to mitigate the cost (Baker 2007). This combination of economic factors and new technologies are slowly eroding the traditional means by which tutors manage students’ first contact with research content.
1.3 Libraries as social learning spaces
Universities are increasingly responsive to the changing needs of students and to that end are providing library spaces or ‘information commons’ which are purposely designed to enhance collaboration. The move towards creating social learning spaces has been informed by a consensus in research into the value to student learning of group work and collaborative projects in teaching and learning (Bruner 1996; Paris and Turner 1994; Waite and Davis 2006). In the UK, the University of Sheffield’s Information Commons has wholly re-thought the relationship between students and research content, displacing the traditional role of the library as a repository for books and instead emphasising the provision of a variety of different kinds of learning spaces, both physical and virtual. Other UK Universities including Edge Hill University and the University of Central Lancashire have followed a similar model. At the University of Georgia, the creation of an electronic library followed research that clearly showed that students prefer to access research content using the internet and that their learning and research habits had decisively shifted away from the ‘lone scholar’ model of learning (Van Scoyoc and Cason 2006, 48-9). This ‘Library 2.0’ is discussed in more detail by Maness (2006) who suggests that the dynamic electronic library should provide a multimedia experience that is ‘socially rich’ and ‘communally innovative’.

2. Students’ use of research content
Many studies in this area now focus on the role of digital information and the role of technology in mediating research content and disrupting established pathways. New technologies also present new challenges. The scale and pace of change is itself a barrier for many students and information overload is a serious obstacle to effective use of research content. Students are no longer constrained by the resources provided by their own institution, but they are not yet equipped with the skills, the literacy, need to deal with the vast amount of information available online. Yet it is now clearly the case that, as Van Scoyoc and Cason (2006) argue, ‘students expect to find most of their information online’. In the past year there have been studies which have usefully corrected over enthusiastic attempts to predict future trends and have highlighted how much research remains to be done on the exact impact of new technologies on students’ use of research content.

3. Students as producers of research content
The literature on students’ use of research content intersects and overlaps with a growing interest in students as producers of research content. As part of this study, we have looked at the ways in which students use social networking and research content produced by undergraduate research.

4 Conclusions
The literature in this area captures student behaviour at a time of unpredictable change in the environment for discovering and using research content in HEIs. The question of how students access and use research content can no longer be separated from an engagement with the technical means by which students access it. The impact of the internet has been researched in detail and a consensus has emerged from the literature about the changes that services such as Google and electronic databases of journals and other research content have had on the way that students select appropriate information and incorporate it into their learning. ICTs allow students to circumvent the traditional ways in which course tutors and institutions attempt to manage the way students access research content. Devices such as course bibliographies, though still important, are disrupted by the free-play of the Google search engine. Yet there is also evidence that students do not all easily fit into the stereotype of the digital native and that many students lack the skills to sift through and manage the variety of information at their disposal. Universities are currently failing to bridge the gap between pedagogic practice and the skills-shortage of students because past mechanisms for framing the student encounter with research have been decisively eroded. Yet HEIs are unable to achieve a coherent policy of leading change in educational practice because of a marked digital divide within their own academic staff. The literature also highlights the importance of disciplines in providing a framework of conventions and practices that shape students’ engagement with knowledge. This can be a more important factor than institutional context in determining what students understand research to be, how they assess its quality and what they do with it in their assessments.

Executive Summary

|Identifying Research |
| |
|• Students are aware of the qualitative distinction between published research and general internet sites |
|• Students are not generally sophisticated in their understanding of things like peer-review or currency, there |
|is a common view that if something is published it must be reliable |
|• There is a growing diversity in the kinds of content identified as research but journal articles and books still |
|dominate students’ perceptions of what research is |
|• Students are very reliant on library catalogues, databases and staff advice |
|• Research content is seen primarily as a source for assignments and students’ perception of research is very |
|much led by the context of their assignments |
|• Students are reluctant to approach their tutor directly in the first instance for advice on what research |
|content to access |
|• Very few students identify undergraduate or postgraduate dissertations as research content |

|Using Research |
| |
|• Most students use research to support their assignments, so use of research is primarily ‘assessment led’ |
|• Some students demonstrate a sophisticated engagement with research which they use to develop |
|arguments rather than simply support a point |
|• A significant and encouraging minority also use research to gain a wider knowledge of their field |
|• Students tend to be very selective, using research content which is immediately relevant to their needs. For |
|example, they are happy to use the limited preview pages in Google Books without seeing the wider |
|context of the material in the rest of their books |
|• Many quote or paraphrase research content in their assignments |
|• Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) identify themselves with academics rather than students and |
|demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of the research environment. |
Questions:

1. What is Google?

2. How google helps students in their study?

3. Why students attracts to use google in their study?

4. Why students consider the google as the most reliable source of information?

5. How google affects the study of students?

6. What are the reasons of student in using google?

7. Is there disadvantages in using this website?

8. What are the impact of these to students?

9. Do google really helps students in their study?

10. What are the advantages of using google to students?

Advantages Of Using Google
To Students

Erham A. Bohoh
MTJ2-B5