Examining the effectiveness of real-time query expansion

Interactive query expansion (IQE) (c.f. [Efthimiadis, E. N. (1996). Query expansion. Annual Review of Information Systems and Technology, 31, 121–187]) is a potentially useful technique to help searchers formulate improved query statements, and ultimately retrieve better search results. However, IQE is seldom used in operational settings. Two possible explanations for this are that IQE is generally not integrated into searchers’ established information-seeking behaviors (e.g., examining lists of documents), and it may not be offered at a time in the search when it is needed most (i.e., during the initial query formulation). These challenges can be addressed by coupling IQE more closely with familiar search activities, rather than as a separate functionality that searchers must learn. In this article we introduce and evaluate a variant of IQE known as Real-Time Query Expansion (RTQE). As a searcher enters their query in a text box at the interface, RTQE provides a list of suggested additional query terms, in effect offering query expansion options while the query is formulated. To investigate how the technique is used – and when it may be useful – we conducted a user study comparing three search interfaces: a baseline interface with no query expansion support; an interface that provides expansion options during query entry, and a third interface that provides options after queries have been submitted to a search system. The results show that offering RTQE leads to better quality initial queries, more engagement in the search, and an increase in the uptake of query expansion. However, the results also imply that care must be taken when implementing RTQE interactively. Our findings have broad implications for how IQE should be offered, and form part of our research on the development of techniques to support the increased use of query expansion.     

Information systems management: The need for a post-modern approach

This paper proposes a post-modern way of thinking about the development and the management of information systems and especially information systems development. The paper proposes a framework for a co-evolutionary or co-creation approach to information systems development and management incorporating all the main stakeholders.     

The Leaking Pipeline: Women Postgraduate and Early Career Researchers in Australia

This paper explores the leaking pipeline in women's participation rates from Bachelor to postgraduate research programmes. In examining projects at two Australian universities to identify and implement strategies to improve women's participation in research higher degrees, it focuses on three points of leakagebetween Bachelor and Bachelor with Honours degree programmes, Bachelor degree with Honours and postgraduate research programmes, and completion of postgraduate research and taking up a postdoctoral position, and the links between them. It examines three important consequences of women not undertaking or completing postgraduate research: entering academia at lower levels or in casual positions, often while doing postgraduate research part-time; tending to focus on teaching rather than research; and, due to under-representation at middle levels, not achieving a critical mass in senior academia. The paper suggests ways in which university policy may impact on women's participation in postgraduate research programmes through implementation of university-wide and departmental policies encompassing the strategies identified in these studies.     

Tertiary education in the Noughties: the student perspective

The psychodynamics of learning and teaching at a time of changing funding arrangements and priorities are explored and discussed through students’ accounts of their experience of university. The contextual, organizational and socio‐political characteristics implicated in these psychodynamic processes are considered. Among the psychodynamic issues that emerged from students’ accounts were organizational distancing, expressed in the physical and symbolic distance between students and teachers as well as a perceived distance between lecturers and their teaching responsibilities, and transference evident in the students’ struggle between dependence and independence.