1. Faculty use of digital resources and its impact on digital libraries
Josh Morrill, Morrill Solutions Research
Alan Wolf, University of Wisconsin - Madison
Ellen Iverson, Carleton College
Flora McMartin, Broad Based Knowledge
Cathy Manduca, Carleton College
Glenda Morgan, California State University

2. Outline Background Focus groups Survey Design Survey delivery
Current results
Follow up

3. Study background Research questions
What are the characteristics of online collections that make them useful for teaching?
How do faculty employ materials in useful collections?
How are collections, resources, and services best aligned with faculty work patterns?

4. Overview of methodology
Focus groups
Code transcripts & determine themes
Survey design
Institution recruitment
Survey delivery
Analysis

5. Focus groups
Conducted across the range of higher education institutions, STEM disciplines, and instructor ranks.
Questions
Finding materials (types, methods, barriers)
Sharing materials (types, methods, barriers)
Communities and their roles in teaching improvement and sharing.
How they use the web for professional development

6. What they know about DLs
Personal definitions of DLs vary widely
Very few people knew about NSF DL efforts
Barriers
Information overload
Concern about copyright and use
Not invented here
Google as content aggregator
Concern about the availability of resources

7. Themes arising from the focus groups
Characteristics of online collections that make them useful
Faculty work patterns vis a vis digital learning materials and teaching
Alignment between DLs and faculty work patterns
Faculty use of DLs and digital materials
Obstacles to faculty use of DLs
Faculty use of Web for P&T purposes
Bullet 1 is “The kinds of content, features/services that attract users to the collection and that they return to because of these characteristics”
Bullet 2 is “This theme attempts to identify the work patterns of faculty members as they prepare for a class or course. The section spans from the planning process through teaching”
Bullet 3 is “What are the features and services that faculty desire and which ones do digital libraries provide? How do faculty perceive these services and features? What might make them easier to use?”
Bullet 4 is “Level to which faculty use digital libraries, if at all and why they say they do or don’t. What gets in the way of their use of these services? “
Bullets 5&6 are self explanatory

8. Survey design Three Facets of Survey Validity Face Validity
External Validity
Internal Validity

9. Face Validity
(Def) Does this “seem” right? Does this survey address what we want it to address?
How we addressed Face Validity:
Developed survey over 5 months (Feb – Jun) with grant research group.
Open process with extensive feedback, meetings and revisions.

10. External Validity
(Def) Do other people think this survey seems “right”/ cohesive/ clear?
How we addressed External Validity:
Pre-Tested survey on appox. 20 faculty members (R1, technical college, masters and liberal arts colleges)
6 were followed up with in depth interviews. The remainder were given a survey with comment boxes on each page.

11. Internal Validity
(Def) Are you measuring what you THINK you are measuring? How can you minimize error in your measurement?
How we addressed Internal Validity:
“Reverse Coded” items to assess mindfulness.
Likert Scales Throughout:
forced choice vs. ambivalence scale points. (Skip Logic helps this immeasurably)
Factor Analysis/ Reliability Testing (more to come here)

12. Recruiting Recruiting is ongoing
We have attempted contact with all higher education institutions for whom we could identify contacts.
Contacts attempted were typically library directors, deans of science colleges, learning technology centers, and occasionally chairs of science departments

13. Recruiting
We have have received responses from almost 150 institutions
More than 75 have agreed to participate
The majority have sent the survey to all their faculty (all disciplines, all ranks).
There has been an outstanding response from the community colleges.

14. Recruiting - what is left to do
We believe that given the current rate of participation we are on track to gather statistically significant sample
We may need to recruit more doctoral and master’s degree granting institutions

15. Preliminary results
To date, much of the focus group data is being confirmed --- But data is still coming in.
….AND WE STILL WANT MORE!
But the level of granularity in the survey is giving some unique nuance/ differentiation to the focus group data.
For example…?

16. How does this compare with the focus groups?
Low-complexity
High granularity
Google
Survey
Low-complexity
High granularity
Google
BUT…
There are some interesting trends emerging

17. Follow up - Faculty development
The original idea for this grant
Analyze which practices work under which circumstances
Provide guidance for faculty developers as to which practices might work best for local circumstances.

18. Follow up - web search observational studies
Survey gives ½ the story --- But what happens BEFORE people enter a digital library?
What are the decision points in a search process that may now lead to “Google” but could be changed to lead to a digital library?

19. Contact Information
If you are interested in participating
Contact
For more details visit
We wish to acknowledge the National Science Foundation for their support (DUE ).