Increasing Effective Student Use of the Scientific Journal Literature (National Science Foundation National Science Digital Library Grant) School of Information Sciences Research Forum
National Science Digital Library Services Track Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Education Program
Team Dr. Carol Tenopir, Principal Investigator Dr. Richard Pollard Dr. Peiling Wang
General Questions How can undergraduate students be encouraged to recognize and use high quality science journal literature? What features in a journal literature digital collection would be most useful to undergraduate science students and would encourage use? What features would be most useful to graduate students and faculty in the sciences for their students and to encourage use?
Ultimate Goal The ultimate goal of this project is to identify, test and implement features of the science journals that will enhance their appeal and encourage sustained use by undergraduate science students
Phase 1 Focus groups and surveys –Undergraduate students –Graduate students (Graduate Teaching Assistants) –Faculty –ORNL scientists
Phase I (cont’d) Analysis resulted in the definition of the following issues for study: –Variations by grade level –Variations by subject discipline –Access means for articles and search strategies –Variations in type of literature required and faculty recommendations –Problems with journals and access –Purposes for using journal articles
Phase II March – July 2003 Testing specified desired features Testbed is a full subset of OSTI’s Energy Citations Database
Collection Testbed: Energy Citations Database
Collection Testbed: Elsevier ScienceDirect
Examples of Features to be Tested Linking Parts of articles attended to Navigation (Help, Save) Information used in search strategies Understanding journal articles
Phase 2 Subjects Must have taken physics, chemistry, engineering Communications class credit Phase 1 participants s, flyers, reminders, class visits, etc. 14 participants to date
Usability Lab Built from scratch Room 296, Communications Bldg. Richard Pollard will discuss