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Feedback is identified in the works of researchers as an essential element for improving the learning process of students. Research shows that lecturer's feedback creates value when it provides not only appraisal information but also links to further learning. This type of feedback affects the learner's information behaviour, i.e., encourages searching for additional information and using it in the learning process. The paper aims to analyze the peculiarities of students' information behaviour during feedback. The research object is investigated from an information science perspective, using theories of information behaviour. An exploratory quantitative survey of 111 Communication BA students from Vilnius University, Lithuania, was conducted. The results of the study revealed the characteristics of feedback inspired by information behaviour: the feedback provided by the lecture is the primary source of information; feedback promotes individual information search; timely feedback encourages proactive information behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose Information seeking is often performed in collaborative contexts. The research into such collaborative information seeking (CIS) has been proceeding since the 1990s but lacks methodological discussions. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and discuss methodological issues in existing CIS studies.Design/methodology/approach The authors systematically review 69 empirical CIS studies.Findings The review shows that the most common methods of data collection are lab experiments (43 percent), observation (19 percent) and surveys (16 percent), that the most common methods of data analysis are description (33 percent), statistical testing (29 percent) and content analysis (19 percent) and that CIS studies involve a fairly even mix of novice, intermediate and specialist participants. However, the authors also find that CIS research is dominated by exploratory studies, leaves it largely unexplored in what ways the findings of a study may be specific to the particular study setting, appears to assign primacy to precision at the expense of generalizability, struggles with investigating how CIS activities extend over time and provides data about behavior to a larger extent than about reasons, experiences and especially outcomes.Research limitations/implications The major implication of this review is its identification of the need for a shared model to which individual CIS studies can contribute in a cumulative manner. To support the development of such a model, the authors discuss a model of the core CIS process and a model of the factors that trigger CIS.Originality/value This study assesses the current state of CIS research, provides guidance for future CIS studies and aims to inspire further methodological discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast research on collaborative information seeking (CIS) and expertise seeking (EXS) to identify focal themes, blind spots, and possibilities for cross-fertilization.Design/methodology/approach Existing research was reviewed. The review consisted of a content analysis of 70 (CIS) and 72 (EXS) studies with respect to the context, scope, process, and setting of CIS and EXS, supplemented with a bibliometric analysis of the references in the reviewed studies.Findings In CIS, the context is a group of actors collaborating on a shared task. In EXS, the information need is held by an individual but resolved by consulting other people. While the typical scope of EXS studies is source selection, CIS studies mostly concern the consultation of the sources and the use of the obtained information. CIS and EXS studies also attend differentially to the information-seeking process. Only 4 percent of the references in the reviewed studies are cited in both CIS and EXS research. The author concludes that, at present, CIS and EXS are different discourses about similar issues.Research limitations/implications Increased interaction between CIS and EXS will advance research in both areas and prevent duplication of effort. Topics for future research are identified. It should be noted that the findings are limited to the 142 studies reviewed.Originality/value By analyzing CIS in the context of EXS, and vice versa, this study provides a fresh look at the information-seeking research that attends to collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper describes our novel perspective on 'searching to learn' through collaborative information seeking (CIS). We describe this perspective, which motivated empirical work to 'orchestrate' a CIS searching to learn session. The work is described through the lens of orchestration, an approach which brings to the fore the ways in which: background context-including practical classroom constraints, and theoretical perspective; actors-including the educators, researchers, and technologies; and activities that are to be completed, are brought into alignment. The orchestration is exemplified through the description of research work designed to explore a pedagogically salient construct (epistemic cognition), in a particular institutional setting. Evaluation of the session indicated satisfaction with the orchestration from students, with written feedback indicating reflection from them on features of the orchestration. We foreground this approach to demonstrate the potential of orchestration as a design approach for researching and implementing CIS as a 'searching to learn' context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What problems does groupwork pose for information literacy, and how can the ACRL Framework help us to address them? This paper addresses gaps in the scholarly literature to examine how groupwork problematizes our understanding of information literacy. We explore ramifications of what it means to be information literate as a group versus as an individual. The ACRL Framework is explored for areas of potential opportunity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose Social question and answer (SQA) site is one of the factors that boosted up and popularized the vision of social web. It enables community members to post highly valued answers to globally asked questions and information seekers to grab intellectual information in a contextual, concise, and meaningful format at the cost of investing a few minutes. The purpose of this paper is to present a common architecture, history, and a comprehensive review of such sites.Design/methodology/approach A critical and analytical investigation of the state-of-the-art SQA sites and relevant literature has been carried out with the intention to explore the noticeable features of such sites.Findings By studying relevant literature, and analysing a number of existing systems, a number of research challenges are identified and a generic architecture of SQA sites is contributed.Practical implications The review contributes a comprehensive knowledge about SQA systems and aims to be helpful to new researchers who want to get a broad picture of SQA systems on a single platform. The domain is in its infancy and requires tremendous efforts from the research community to explore its salient aspects with respect to the human world.Originality/value The study inspects SQA sites on a large scale and makes an original contribution by presenting a comprehensive review, future research challenges, and a generic architecture of SQA sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In various work domains, the collaborative performance of a work-task by a team can lead to a shared information need required to fulfill this task. Many empirical studies identified collaborative information seeking and searching (IS&S) as everyday work patterns in order to solve a shared information need and to benefit from the diverse expertise and experience of the team members. This paper presents first empirical results in an ongoing research project: We report on a pilot user study that investigates the collaborative IS&S practices of three work groups in academic and industrial research facilities. The aim of the conducted pilot study was to capture the use of software technologies for realizing collaboration, information seeking and sharing in real-world work settings. We discuss resulting design implications as guideline for extending the ezDL (ezDL: Easy Access to Digital Libraries, ) system towards supporting collaborative IS&S activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies of users with visual impairments access to the web have focused on human-web interaction. This study explores the under investigated area of cross-modal collaborative information seeking (CCIS), that is, the challenges and opportunities that exist in supporting visually impaired (VI) users to take an effective part in collaborative web search tasks with sighted peers. We conducted an observational study to investigate the process with fourteen pairs of VI and sighted users in co-located and distributed settings. The study examined the effects of cross-modal collaborative interaction on the stages of the individual Information Seeking (IS) process. The findings showed that the different stages of the process were performed individually most of the time; however it was observed that some collaboration took place in the results exploration and management stages. The accessibility challenges faced by VI users affected their individual and collaborative interaction and also enforced certain points of collaboration. The paper concludes with some recommendations towards improving the accessibility of cross-modal collaborative search.

合作學習是近來教育實踐很重視的課題,其中很重要的活動之一,就是合作搜尋資訊、研讀、討論,形成學習的焦點。本論文採用Shah(00)的協作膠囊說理論,區別合作和協作,用以強調合作是資源分享,而協作是協同和合作,既分享資源,還須共同完成任務。本研究採行動研究設計,利用研究方法課程,將同學分組,進行協作文獻收集、檢索、評閱、組織、整合,寫成小組海報,並發表。教師於小組討論時參與觀察,撰寫教師日誌,同學亦撰寫學習日誌和小組學習心得,學期結束後,將各項文本進行分析。本研究進行小組合作資訊搜尋的過程研究,期望了解小組合作搜尋資訊有哪些有效的策略。搜尋資訊是資訊技能之一,除了需要相關的知識,包括對於資源、檢索引擎、關鍵詞或分類體系的了解之外,也涉及一些頗有難度的心智活動,例如檢索策略的研擬、相關資訊的篩選、主題聚焦等;對於小組合作檢索資訊而言,建立一致的目標、共同尋求主題聚焦,更需要借助人際溝通技能的幫助,例如表達是否能達意、分享知識是否使小組人員都能理解。這些似乎普通的概念,若能妥適加以整合,應該可以形成有效的小組合作資訊搜尋策略。Collaborative information seeking (CIS) turns out to be a focus of research in the net environment. How collaborative information seeking successfully and effectively performed is a concern of the current researcher. Successfully means the team members reach the mutual goal and accomplish the project satisfactorily. Effectively means the team members accomplish the task with a minimal time and resources spent. This paper attempts to identify the elements for successful and effective CIS. An action research in a class setting was designed and data for both teachers’ observation as well as students’ journal for the collaborative processes were collected. Students’ team projects were analyzed. Key elements for successful and effective CIS were identified and discussed.

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People often engage in collaborative information seeking to achieve common goals, enlist expertise, increase the scope of what can be searched, and even simply to help others. In today's era of increased user-generated content and online sharing, computer and information scientists have a renewed interest in collaborative information seeking as an exciting area of research and development, with applications that range from education to e-commerce, with implications for areas that range from libraries to legal informatics. The Web extra at http://youtu.be/CXnNut7hKsU is a video in which proponents of collaborative information seeking discuss why supporting people's innate behavior and the need for working together while seeking and using information are important to computer science. Featured speakers include Chirag Shah, Rob Capra, Madhu Reddy, Meredith Ringel Morris, Roberto González-Ibáñez, and Michael B. Twidale. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]