Use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) by university freshmen: With special reference to the University of Moratuwa

New coming students for universities are fundamentally different than in the past, because they have been spending their entire lives surrounded by and using ICTs. These students belong to the net generation and always looking for ICTs in each and every activity of their life. However, it is questioned whether all students are in the same level since they should be very fluent with ICTs to move in this 21st century confidently. This study is an attempt made to investigate the level of using ICTs by new coming undergraduates to the University of Moratuwa by examining the frequency of using ICT tools, self rated skill levels and finally their perceptions of the impact of ICT on academic experiences in the university. Twenty two (22) different ICT related activities under 4 main skill domains; basic computer usage, computer applications, Internet/E-mail use and use of technologies for research/academic activities were used for the study. The study is compiled with data from questionnaires of 338 first year students in three faculties; Architecture, Engineering and Information Technology. The study reveals that there is a rapid trend towards a higher ICT usage of university freshmen as digital natives. Majority of the first year students more frequently use computer applications such as word processing, Spreadsheets and Presentation packages, and they have rated themselves as highly skilled in computer applications. The male students reported to be in front in terms of usage of ICTs and level of computer literacy skills than female students. Freshmen from urban communities always believe that they are more skillful in this aspect. Architecture students are somewhat below than others in using ICTs as well as the level of ICT skills. Majority of freshmen believe that using ICTs may help them to improve their learning in the university and they are willing to use ICTs to find information on academic purposes. Recommendations have been made to enhance ICT facilities and programs for freshmen at university

Open source software adoption for library management; issues and challenges

Though there are different kinds of Integrated Library Management Systems (ILMS) available, introduction of Open Source Software (OSS) has proved to be fruitful. KOHA is the mostly used open-source integrated library management system around the world. Recently University of Moratuwa migrated from a proprietary system to KOHA. Social & technical barriers faced in the process is discussed here. Developing new features in KOHA to be compatible with the existing features in the proprietary system had been the biggest challenge met by the researchers. High implementation cost, annual maintenance fee, obtaining frequent updates, and uprising new requirements are the problems in using a proprietary system. Emphasizing the need of new system to the staff, installation and testing parallel to the existing system, and data migration were the main challenges faced. University of Moratuwa Library was able to handle all these challenges and is sticking into a slow, but steady migration schedule. It is concluded that migration to a new ILMS is a challenging and a risky task. However, it is not impossible to do, especially when the new system is open source. That gives the implementing organisation to customise with ease, to suit local needs. However, having ready-access to IT expertise is a necessity

Plagiarism amongst research students in the University of Moratuwa (UoM) in Sri Lanka

Plagiarism has become a major issue in learned societies with the advent of sophisticated software and information via digital media, though the scholars should practice qualities of honesty, ethics and professionalism. Under this circumstance, it is obligated to explore the concerns on plagiarism in the University' of Moratuwa (UoM) as information professionals. Therefore, this research focuses on investigating the state of affairs about plagiarism of the research students in the UoM. The survey research strategy was adapted and a structured questionnaire was distributed among 181 stratified random sample of final year students and the postgraduate students in the UoM. Results reveal that even though most of research students suppose that they are knowledgeable about plagiarism, they do not have a complete knowledge of plagiarism. Further the eight significant factors affecting plagiarism were extracted using the principal component analysis. The key factor to lead plagiarism was the lack of awareness about plagiarism. Therefore, the recommendations were composed to make research students aware of plagiarism via specific programs

Digital repository of University of Moratuwa library

Research paper presented in Annual research and achievers colloquium, University Librarians Association of Sri Lanka (ULA) - 201

Socio-cultural approach to digital information literacy of postgraduate students in Sri Lanka

In today’s information era, combined with technological advancement, most of the information is presented in the digital form. Therefore, the individuals who deal directly with information should be fluent in handling digital information or they should be digital information literate, since creating a digital literate student community is responsibility of librarians and Information Science and Technology teachers. The current study is a socio-cultural approach to investigate the digital information literacy level of postgraduate students in Sri Lanka. Hundred and fifty subjects from two reputed universities in Sri Lanka were included in the study, and the results clearly indicate a higher shift towards digital information literacy skills among the post graduates. Based on this study, recommendations have been made to develop the infrastructure facilities at university level, and to facilitate the availability of more digital information literacy programs for postgraduate students through their respective libraries

User perceptions on newly introduced Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) to the library of the University of Moratuwa (UoM), Sri Lanka

Librarians always try to provide better solutions to their users to optimally utilize the available resources. The user attractive Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) is one of the solutions for making access to resources. Library of the University of Moratuwa (UoM) recently customized its OPAC through KOHA open source software and it is observed that mostly used by its user community. Therefore, this study made an attempt to evaluate user perceptions towards the newly migrated OPAC service via KOHA in the UoM. The study adapted the survey research strategy with a structured questionnaire. Stratified random sampling was employed as faculties and 335 online questionnaires were administered. The response rate of the study was 59.71% and most of the students were from the Faculty of Architecture. According to the findings, although students’ participation for library education programs is relatively better and overall awareness of the changes in the OPAC is low. However, more than 50% of 4th year students are aware of the changes. More than 50% of students believe new OPAC can use easily access to library resources. Experience in using OPACs and having instructed on use of OPACs are the helpful factors in successful use. Finally, majority of the respondents’ perceptions on the novel OPAC is more attractive, user friendly, easy to use and efficient than previous one. Based on the findings recommendations were made to conduct regular user education programs on advantages that can received through KOHA-OPAC of the UOM

Factors affecting query formulation in Web information search

The World Wide Web, which is exponentially growing daily, is also known to be the richest source of information. The Web is universally adopted by university academic communities as a part of their information seeking motivated by a wide variety of needs including academic, professional, personal or entertainment etc. The ability to search and retrieve information from the Web effectively and efficiently is a challenge as current search tools retrieve too many documents of which only a small fraction is relevant to the user query. Studies have revealed that well formulated queries are one of best solutions for this challenge. This study is an attempt to find out the factors affecting query formulation on Web information searching of university academic community. The study is compiled with data gathered from questionnaires of 255 undergraduate students, 107 postgraduate students, 40 NDT students and 30 teaching faculty members. The total response rate is 98.63%. The results indicate Web experience, topic familiarity and search strategies as the identified factors affecting query formulation. The average number of stop words per query decreases when Web used experience increases and the time spent to formulate a query increases when the Web used experience increases. Also, the time spent per query decreases with a familiar topic and he/she desire to use synonyms. Recommendations were made to conduct training programs on available Web information sources/resources and Web searching strategies

Beyond the Boundaries: Remote Access to Online Resources at the University of Moratuwa Library

Though libraries have invested very high percentage of its annual budget to subscribe e-resources, limited attention was paid to ensure consistent and reliable access of those resources. Many library users access e-resources from outside of the University. Therefore many requests have been made to implement a remote access mechanism for e-resources. The objective of the study was to design a proper remote access mechanism to the users for accessing the e-resources provided by University of Moratuwa library. Publishers have provided access to e-resources through Internet Protocol (IP) authentication and not by user identity (user ID) and password. This kind of access created many problems to the users specially for the postgraduate students who do not visit the University regularly as many users need to access e-resources from anywhere, anytime. Using the concept of proxy server, a joint project was conducted between the Center for Information Technology Services (CITeS), University of Moratuwa and the library to provide remote access. Existing Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) was used to authenticate the user access. This allowed remote user to obtain regular, secure access to library e-resources

Modeling water quality changes o f urban canalsin Colombo cit y against rainfall an d land use patterns

Modeling the relationships between surface water quality with rainfall and land-use patterns is of prime importance in exploring effective method s for mitigating the water pollution in areas like Colombo city. These models are important for land-use planning and resource management to plan for best environmental management practices and it is possible to compile detailed inventories and to monitor water quality in surface water bodies. This study focuses on modeling the surface water quality change s of urban canals in Colombo from 2003 to 2009 in relation to rainfall of different climatic seasons, land use types, and population density using a G IS based approach together with statistical modeling. The data on land use, monthly rainfall, population density and water quality from 200 3 to 200 9 was collected from the Department of Survey, Department of Meteorology, Department of Census & Statistics and Sri Lanka Land Reclamation & Development Company respectively. Results revealed that there is a strong significant difference within the mea n values of Conductivity, Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) and Salinity percentage according to the climatic seasons. The water quality attributes; Conductivity, Phosphate , BO D and Salinity percentage were significantly correlated to land-use types (Built-up/Homesteads, Barren, Marsh/Paddy, Park/Playground, Plantation, Scrub and Water bodies). A significant regression model could be drawn to predict the surface water quality in Colombo city using one water quality indicator (BOD) which ma y suggest that point-sources contribute more pollutants than non-point sources. Recommendation s were mad e to consider more important water quality parameters such as biological parameters within an extended study area for future studies because they will be providing complex models of water quality with other factors

Remote access to online resources at University of Moratuwa

Research paper presented in Annual Research and Achievers Colloquium, University Librarians Association of Sri Lanka (2013)Access to online journals, bibliographic databases, online catalogues and the Internet have altered the traditional library usage patterns, behaviors and expectations of modern library users over the last few decades. Online searching has become the norm and users always expect Google or Wikipedia style access to the library resources. Libraries should have a mechanism for supporting these expectations and behaviors to provide a quality customer service and to fulfill their mission to support teaching, learning and research