An ecological model to understand the variety in undergraduate students’ personal information systems

A first-year undergraduate course in Information Systems in a South African university includes an opportunity for students to reflect on their own use of information and personal information systems. Their reflections provide data about the technologies and tools that they use to find and manage everyday life information, as well as academic information, and about the sources of information they draw on. This paper analyses data collected over three years and reports on the dominant technologies and information sources that students use. We then adapt the ecological model of information seeking and use developed by Williamson (1998) to make sense of the diversity of information sources and students’ choices in engaging with them. The results show that students rely to a very small degree on traditional university information sources. The study offers insights into the information contexts and behaviour of students and argues for the importance of a flexible range of information sources to support students in the complex process of managing information for academic success. The results will be of interest to those involved in designing and delivering undergraduate programmes, as well as those providing information services and infrastructures

Constructing information experience: a grounded theory portrait of academic information management

Purpose This paper aims to discuss what it means to consider the information experience of academic information management from a constructivist grounded theory perspective. Using a doctoral study in progress as a case illustration, the authors demonstrate how information experience research applies a wide lens to achieve a holistic view of information management phenomena. By unifying a range of elements, and understanding information and its management to be inseparable from the totality of human experience, an information experience perspective offers a fresh approach to answering today\u27s research questions. Design/methodology/approach The case illustration is a constructivist grounded theory study using interactive interviews, an original form of semi-structured qualitative interviews combined with card-sorting exercises (Conrad and Tucker, 2019), to deepen reflections by participants and externalize their information experiences. The constructivist variant of grounded theory offers an inductive, exploratory approach to address the highly contextualized information experiences of student-researchers in managing academic information. Findings Preliminary results are reported in the form of three interpretative categories that outline the key aspects of the information experience for student-researchers. By presenting these initial results, the study demonstrates how the constructivist grounded theory methodology can illuminate multiple truths and bring a focus on interpretive practices to the understanding of information management experiences. Research limitations/implications This new approach offers holistic insights into academic information management phenomena as contextual, fluid and informed by meaning-making and adaptive practices. Limitations include the small sample size customary to qualitative research, within one situated perspective on the academic information management experience. Originality/value The study demonstrates the theoretical and methodological contributions of the constructivist information experience research to illuminate information management in an academic setting

Early-age Digital Experience Helps Form IT Identity and Its Impact on Workplace Performance

One of the most anticipated questions in the digital age is how the generation who grew up with digital technologies will behave in the workplace. We investigate the role of early-age digital experience on performance drawing on IT identity theory. Specifically, we hypothesized that early-age digital experience indirectly relates to job performance and work innovation sequentially via IT identity and digital creativity. Additionally, perceived managerial support amplifies IT identity’s influences on digital creativity as well as the indirect effects of early-age digital experience on work results. Data collected via a multiple-source and multiple-wave survey from 281 employees in a large Internet company support the research model. This research enriches the understanding of what drives individuals’ digital creativity and demonstrates that employees with early-age digital experience are critical resources for organizational competitive advantage in a digital economy. Practical implications for employees’ early-age digital use and workplace management are discussed

Organização de Informações Digitais Pessoais: um estudo sobre as práticas e percepções de organização de discentes universitários

The present work aimed to map the practices and perceptions that the students of a Brazilian federal university have about the way they organize, treat, archive and access their personal digital documents, besides offering an information framework about their behaviour to support future information literacy activities and the development of new technologies. The methodological procedure used was survey research, and data were collected through the application of an online questionnaire. The main results found were that the students have an organizational system of their own and trust it.  Along with this, we observed practices that can be discussed and worked on, such as excessive saving of files, reluctance to delete unimportant files, and the characterization of the cloud system and external hard drives as intermittent archives. Thus, it can be concluded that there is a need for information literacy activities to stimulate and enhance information competencies in the processes of archiving and organizing digital files of university students, which will contribute to future decision-making in the academic world. O presente trabalho visou mapear as práticas e as percepções que os discentes de uma universidade federal têm sobre a maneira que organizam, tratam, arquivam e acessam seus documentos digitais pessoais, além de oferecer um arcabouço informacional sobre o comportamento deles para subsidiar futuras atividades de letramento informacional e desenvolvimento de novas tecnologias. Foi usado como procedimento metodológico a pesquisa de levantamento (survey) e a coleta de dados se deu através da aplicação de um questionário online. Os principais resultados encontrados foram que os discentes possuem um sistema próprio de organização e confiam nele. Junto a isso, observamos práticas que podem ser postas em debates e trabalhadas como o salvamento excessivo de arquivos, relutância de apagar arquivos não importantes e a caracterização do sistema em nuvem e HDs externos como arquivos intermitentes. Sendo assim, pode-se concluir que há necessidade de atividades de letramento informacional para estimular e aprimorar as competências em informação nos processos de arquivamento e organização de arquivos digitais dos discentes universitários, o que contribuirá para as tomadas de decisões futuras no mundo acadêmico

The Guided Tour: A Research Technique for the Study of Situated, Embodied Information

This article introduces the guided tour as an appropriate research technique for studying situated and embodied information. The guided tour hybridizes aspects of observation and interviews, and involves a researcher's relatively shortened, nonspontaneous entry into a field site. During a guided tour, a participant leads the researcher through the location (often one that is personally meaningful for him or her) while describing and explaining its features, thinking-aloud the ideas, thoughts, and feelings to which it gives rise, and responding to the researcher's gentle inquiries. This article begins with a sustained background to the technique and descriptive breakdown of it in terms of other, related methods and techniques. It then reviews prior use of the guided tour in the information and library science field, where it is not prevalent per se, but has been used on an ongoing basis for at least three decades. It delineates practical steps and tips for carrying out a guided tour as well as strengths and limitations of the technique for studying situated, embodied information and information phenomena in general. The article concludes by briefly discussing researchers as embodied research instruments and the role of reflexivity in qualitative research

Academic Librarians and the Space/Time of Information Literacy, the Neoliberal University, and the Global Knowledge Economy

This qualitative research study explores how academic librarians working in Canadian public research-intensive universities experience the space/time of information literacy, the neoliberal university, and the knowledge economy. Information literacy lies at the intersection of higher education and the knowledge economy: it became a priority for librarians in Anglo-American countries in the 1980s in the context of neoliberal educational reforms intended to better prepare skilled workers for the “information society” (Behrens, 1994; Birdsall, 1994). The shift from Fordist modes of production to flexible accumulation, characterized by the expansion of capital into new markets, flexible workers, and just-in-time inventories, made possible by new information and communication technologies, occurred around the same time, impacting the relationship between space, time, and work, and intensifying and accelerating our everyday experience of time (Castells, 1996; Harvey, 1989). Temporal labour in the knowledge economy is gendered, raced, and classed (Sharma, 2014). Time serves a form of social control: some workers’ temporal experiences are normalized whereas others’ are recalibrated (Sharma, 2014). In the workplace, time enables, regulates, and constrains performance, attitudes, and behaviours (Adam, 1998). This study explores how academic librarians, members of a feminized profession (Harris, 1992) and marginal educators on campus, experience the space/time of higher education’s globalizing agenda across their roles and responsibilities. The theoretical framework for this research draws from diverse disciplines and critical perspectives. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with twenty-four librarians. Thematic analysis within a constructionist framework was used to analyze the data. Findings suggest time is a key mechanism through which neoliberal governmentality is enacted in Canadian academic libraries. Just-in-time service models and pedagogical approaches and future-oriented corporate strategies and practices characterized the library’s timescape. Librarians experienced time as accelerated and intensified. Time for scholarship iii was rare. Librarians used multiple technologies of the self in order to regulate and recalibrate themselves. Some engaged in self-censorship in order to comply with corporatized institutional values and priorities. As a result, librarians experienced stress and considerable emotional labour (Hochschild, 1983). This study makes a significant contribution to the existing literature on time in the neoliberal university and the conditions of academic librarians’ work

Baby Boomers and Technology: Factors and Challenges in Utilizing Mobile Devices

This exploratory dissertation study reports an investigation of Baby Boomers utilizing mobile technology to determine how Baby Boomers were utilizing mobile devices and if there were any types of challenges and affecting factors some Baby Boomers could face when searching for information in an online mobile environment. Fifty Baby Boomer participants were recruited by a purposive snowball sampling method and were divided into two groups, twenty-five Younger Boomers and twenty-five Older Boomers to look for comparisons and differences among the Baby Boomers in regards to mobile technology usage, search activities, environmental context, frequency and duration of search activities, as well as the factors and challenges they could encounter while using a mobile device since the age range spans nineteen years. The study was designed to answer two research questions: How are Baby Boomers utilizing a mobile device to search for information in terms of the mobile device types, the environmental contexts and the types of information searched?; and What are the challenges concerning Baby Boomers utilizing a mobile device in searching for information and their affecting factors? This exploratory dissertation study used a qualitative methods approach based in grounded theory to analyze the data. Participants were given a choice of using print or electronic instruments to participate in the study. Multiple collection methods were used to gather the data, consisting of a questionnaire and solicited diaries that were kept for a period of seven days with follow-up interviews given to all participants. The grounded theory approach created a coding schema of ten types of challenges representing five major categories and twenty-three affecting factors. The comparison and interpretation of the search activities, the types of challenges and the affecting factors led to the development of the Baby Boomer Mobile Device Information Searching Model. Theoretical, methodological and practical implications that include system design and library services have been discussed providing suggestions to system designers, researchers and information professionals within and outside the Library and Information Science field

Exploring Undergraduate Perceptions of Meaning Making and Social Media in their Learning

Those concerned with teaching and learning in higher education and the Net generation’s perspectives on and uses of technology must address calls to move beyond the digital native debate (Bennett & Maton, 2010; Kennedy, Judd, Dalgarno, & Waycott, 2010) by asking students directly what they see as a meaningful part of their learning. This study aims to move beyond the digital native debate by developing research-informed understandings of the ways in which Net generation students may perceive technologies, specifically social media, to be a meaningful part of their undergraduate learning. The research questions guiding this study include: (RQ1) In what ways do undergraduate learners from different disciplines view social media to be a meaningful part of their university learning? (RQ2) What characteristics of social media do undergraduate learners see as contributing to their meaning making during their university learning? This study uses a social constructivist approach, thereby employing two main premises: learners actively construct their own knowledge, and social interactions are an important part of knowledge construction (Woolfolk, Winne, Perry, & Shapka, 2010, pp. 343-344). The research design is a mixed methods research (MMR) methodology, a methodological approach where a combination of methods is intentionally used to best address the research questions (Creswell, 2008; Creswell, 2015). This study’s MMR design involved a first phase qualitative component of intensive, semi-structured interviews with 30 undergraduate students enrolled in full-time studies at the University of Alberta, a large, Canadian, research-intensive university – with ten students from each of the three disciplinary areas of 1) humanities and social sciences, 2) health sciences, and 3) natural sciences and engineering, analyzed using a generic qualitative approach (Merriam, 2009) incorporating constructivist grounded theory techniques (Charmaz, 2014). The second phase quantitative component was comprised of undergraduate students across disciplines with survey responses (N = 679) regarding their perspectives on and uses of social media technology in their university learning. This phase included two pilot surveys conducted before the final survey was distributed to ensure the reliability and validity of the instrument developed. Survey responses were collected electronically via SurveyMonkey, and analyzed via descriptive statistics. The findings in this study shed new insights into student perspectives and uses of social media, and the variety of ways in which undergraduates intentionally chose (or, chose not) to incorporate social media into their university learning in meaningful ways. The interviews provide a detailed picture of undergraduate perspectives regarding the specific ways in which social media can help and hinder learning, comprising what students consider as a double-edged sword. Student perspectives and descriptions formed key recurring themes, which emerged into several core characteristics of social media, as well as core categories of meaning making in undergraduate university learning. Within the qualitative interviews and the open-ended survey results, there is an overarching theme of social media as a double-edged sword that both informs and distracts, having the potential to both help and hinder learning. Together, the qualitative and quantitative results demonstrate that several contextual relationships exist, including an important relationship between the particular ways of meaning making identified and the specific social media technologies undergraduates use for their university learning. For those concerned with social media in higher education, these results show how factors such as age and digital native claims should not be seen as primary, deterministic elements of technology use. Rather than taking an approach founded upon technological determinism, the idea of a generational zeitgeist should be considered, where learning context and social media affordances become key.This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada