Teaching clinical informatics to third-year medical students: negative results from two controlled trials

BACKGROUND: Prior educational interventions to increase seeking evidence by medical students have been unsuccessful. METHODS: We report two quasirandomized controlled trials to increase seeking of medical evidence by third-year medical students. In the first trial (1997–1998), we placed computers in clinical locations and taught their use in a 6-hour course. Based on negative results, we created SUMSearch(TM), an Internet site that automates searching for medical evidence by simultaneous meta-searching of MEDLINE and other sites. In the second trial (1999–2000), we taught SUMSearch's use in a 5½-hour course. Both courses were taught during the medicine clerkship. For each trial, we surveyed the entire third-year class at 6 months, after half of the students had taken the course (intervention group). The students who had not received the intervention were the control group. We measured self-report of search frequency and satisfaction with search quality and speed. RESULTS: The proportion of all students who reported searching at least weekly for medical evidence significantly increased from 19% (1997–1998) to 42% (1999–2000). The proportion of all students who were satisfied with their search results increased significantly between study years. However, in neither study year did the interventions increase searching or satisfaction with results. Satisfaction with the speed of searching was 27% in 1999–2000. This did not increase between studies years and was not changed by the interventions. CONCLUSION: None of our interventions affected searching habits. Even with automated searching, students report low satisfaction with search speed. We are concerned that students using current strategies for seeking medical evidence will be less likely to seek and appraise original studies when they enter medical practice and have less time

Tactics used when searching for digital videos

In a world increasingly using multimedia materials, it is important for us to understand how people search databases for videos, and how the medium of the object in the collection may provide a context for those search behaviors. Specifically, this paper is concerned with the moves and tactics that 36 people used while conducting 141 searches of a video retrieval system. Transaction logs captured the participants' search strategies; each search move was coded and the data were examined for maximal repeating patterns (MRPs). Thirteen different search patterns (i.e., tactics) were used by the study participants; the tactics were mainly characterized by (1) the addition of concepts, resulting in a decrease in the size of the results set, and (2) frequent display and browsing of the search results. To explore the possibility that the multimedia character of the materials in the collection might affect people's search behaviors, these results are compared to results from an earlier study of search tactics used when searching a textual/factual database. Copyright 2010 ACM

What Can Task Teach Us About Query Reformulations?

International audienceA significant amount of prior research has been devoted to understanding query reformulations. The majority of these works rely on time-based sessions which are sequences of contiguous queries segmented using time threshold on users’ activities. However, queries are generally issued by users having in mind a particular task, and time-based sessions unfortunately fail in revealing such tasks. In this paper, we are interested in revealing in which extent time-based sessions vs. task-based sessions represent significantly different background contexts to be used in the perspective of better understanding users’ query reformulations. Using insights from large-scale search logs, our findings clearly show that task is an additional relevant search unit that helps better understanding user’s query reformulation patterns and predicting the next user’s query. The findings from our analyses provide potential implications for model design of task-based search engines

Comparing social tags with subject headings on annotating books: A study comparing the information science domain in English and Chinese

The literature often views the emergence of social tagging as a potential alternative method to controlled vocabulary for organizing and indexing large-scale information resources. In this paper, we present an in-depth examination of the relationship between social tagging and controlled vocabulary-based indexing and organization in two unique contexts: the information science domain and when comparing data gathered from both English and Chinese sources. Our results show that the information science domain has more overlap between social tags and controlled vocabulary-based subject terms. This is reflected in the higher percentage of overlapping terms between tags and subject terms, as well as in the strong similarity (measured by Jaccard's coefficient) in frequently used keywords among tags and subject terms. However, social tags in the information science domain still possess limitations in terms of uncontrolled terms, where inconsistencies and noisy usages exist. Our results also show that language difference does have an impact on social tagging. The numbers of Chinese tags overall and per book are less than those of English tags. The most frequently used English tags are single-word terms, which are different from multi-word controlled vocabulary terms. In comparison, the character difference between the most frequently used Chinese tags and Chinese subject terms is just one character (3 vs 4). However, English and Chinese users do share many similar behaviours when they tag books in the information science domain. Many of the most frequently used tags are shared between the two languages and the patterns of overlap between topical tags and subject terms are also similar between the two languages. Overall, despite the application limitations for social tagging in cataloguing and indexing, we believe that tagging has the potential to become a complementary resource for expanding and enriching controlled vocabulary systems. With the help of future technology to regulate and promote features related to controlled vocabulary in social tags, a hybrid cataloguing and indexing system that integrates social tags with controlled vocabulary would greatly improve people's organizational and access capabilities within information resources. © The Author(s) 2012

Introduction to the special issue on search as learning

ISSN:1573-7659ISSN:1386-456