Role Ambiguity And Role Performance Effectiveness: Moderating The Effect Of Feedback Seeking Behaviour

The purpose of the present study is to understand the influence of a contextual factor (role ambiguity) and personal characteristics (feedback seeking behaviour) on role performance. As interdependent team based work has become an inherent characteristic of the workplace, role ambiguity while working is quite inherent in such organisations. By gaining better clarity regarding individual roles, employees can impact their role performance significantly. Data were collected from 176 employees of a large information technology organisation using survey technique by physically administering the questionnaire with the help of the Human Resource department in two phases; first from the employees and co-workers and finally from the supervisors. Subsequent data analysis was performed using hierarchical multiple regression. Results showed that feedback seeking both from a supervisor and co-workers ameliorated the effects of role ambiguity on role performance. Specifically, compared to feedback seeking from coworkers, feedback seeking from a supervisor was found to be more useful in reducing the effects of role ambiguity on role performance. This study draws from social cognitive theory and self-regulation theories, and implications are discussed for practicing managers in the IT industry

The effects of cross-age mentoring in an online collaborative environment

This mixed method research was designed to examine the effects of cross-age mentoring in an inter-institutional online learning community. The research questions focused on the impact of mentoring on high school students’ confidence in their information seeking skills, perceptions of their information seeking standards, and the application of these standards to an information seeking task. Also of interest was the dialogic interaction between the students at the two sites, the impact of the facilitator on the process, and the university students’ perceptions about their experience. The participants included 26 students (mentees) enrolled in an American history class at a rural high school and 18 pre-service teachers (mentors) enrolled in an introductory educational technology course. Mentoring groups comprised of four-five high school students and three-four pre-service teachers interacted via a synchronous online courseware system. Both classes met at the same time of the day, twice weekly, allowing for synchronous interactions. The project was implemented over a five week period during which pre- and post-tests of information seeking confidence and standards were administered and students were engaged in their information seeking tasks. During the course of the project the online interactions were archived and saved for later analysis. Results revealed that there was no change in the high school students’ confidence in their information seeking abilities. The assessment of their evaluative standards revealed that they became more aware of the importance of evaluating the accuracy of information they located. In addition, a positive correlation was found between their understandings of the importance of evaluating information to determine its relevance to the task at hand and the disposition toward a more expert approach to seeking information. Performance on the information seeking task was positively influenced by conceptual scaffolding provided by both the facilitator and the pre-service teachers. Feedback that encouraged the high school students to consider conceptual issues was discovered to be most effective. The findings from this research contribute to the literature on cross-age mentoring between higher education and K-12 students as well as providing insights about strategies that influence students’ abilities to locate, evaluate, and synthesize information

What learning analytics based prediction models tell us about feedback preferences of students

Learning analytics (LA) seeks to enhance learning processes through systematic measurements of learning related data and to provide informative feedback to learners and educators (Siemens & Long, 2011). This study examined the use of preferred feedback modes in students by using a dispositional learning analytics framework, combining learning disposition data with data extracted from digital systems. We analyzed the use of feedback of 1062 students taking an introductory mathematics and statistics course, enhanced with digital tools. Our findings indicated that compared with hints, fully worked-out solutions demonstrated a stronger effect on academic performance and acted as a better mediator between learning dispositions and academic performance. This study demonstrated how e-learners and their data can be effectively re-deployed to provide meaningful insights to both educators and learners

Stretching the limits in help-seeking research

This special section focuses on help seeking in a wide range of learning environments, from classrooms to online forums. Previous research has rather restrictively focused on the identification of personal characteristics that predict whether or not learners seek help under certain conditions. However, help-seeking research has begun to broaden these self-imposed limitations. The papers in this special section represent good examples of this development. Indeed, help seeking in the presented papers is explored through complementary theoretical lenses (e.g., linguistic, instructional), using a wide scope of methodologies (e.g., teacher reports, log files), and in a manner which embraces the support of innovative technologies (e.g., cognitive tutors, web-based environments)

Exploring collaboration patterns among global software development teams.

This study examines communication behaviors in global software student teams. The authors of the paper characterize the types of communication behaviors that occur when student teams are engaged in a software development project. The authors present findings from a one-semester study that examined factors contributing to successful distributed programming interactions among students enrolled at the University of Atilim (Turkey), Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá, University of North Texas, and Middlesex University (UK). Using content and cluster analyses techniques, we identified distinct patterns of collaboration and examined how these patterns were associated with task, culture, GPA, and performance of collaborative teams. Our results suggest that communication patterns among global software learners may be related to task type, culture and GPA. It is hoped that these findings will lead to the development of new strategies for improving communication among global software teams

Affective feedback: an investigation into the role of emotions in the information seeking process

User feedback is considered to be a critical element in the information seeking process, especially in relation to relevance assessment. Current feedback techniques determine content relevance with respect to the cognitive and situational levels of interaction that occurs between the user and the retrieval system. However, apart from real-life problems and information objects, users interact with intentions, motivations and feelings, which can be seen as critical aspects of cognition and decision-making. The study presented in this paper serves as a starting point to the exploration of the role of emotions in the information seeking process. Results show that the latter not only interweave with different physiological, psychological and cognitive processes, but also form distinctive patterns, according to specific task, and according to specific user

A new model of information seeking stopping behavior

textWeb search engines play an important role in peoples daily life. Widespread usage of search engine poses continuous challenges for designing information search systems that can bring people best user experience. To address this challenges, it is particularly important to understand how people seek information. In spite of a large number of studies on human information seeking, the reasons of when and why users terminate information seeking are uncertain and many proposed theories have a limited capability for predicting this type of behavior. In our study, we conducted lab-based experiments, where participants performed assigned information search tasks on Wikipedia pages. Inspired by theories and methods from cognitive science, we captured participants information search behavior such as query usage, search engine result page visits, Wikipedia page visits, and task duration. Additionally, we used eye-tracking techniques to examine the number of people's eye fixations. Using exploratory factor analysis (EFA), we have confirmed exploratory and validation processes can be distinguished based on different types of costs associated with each of them. Based on the findings of the regression tree model, evaluating the cost and gain in the validation process provide important feedback to people for controlling and monitoring their information search.Informatio