Free-form searching via web sites: Content and moving observed in the context of personal development

This empirical article focuses on information seeking—related to personal development—via World Wide Web sites. In order to obtain detailed and valid data, free-form Web searches by 15 individuals were observed and videotaped. The 687 sites visited by the informants, along with their actions therein, were examined and coded. The study explores the entity focus and origin of the viewed WWW sites, as well as the tactics of moving within and between sites. Correlations between the variables are also analysed. One of the most interesting findings was that personal resources—documents within the user’s computer—are a part of the Internet, too, when they are connected to it. This observation highlights the potential importance of researching the ways in which internal and external search for information differs, and what roles local resources have.     

University students' situational reaction tendencies: Reflections on general study orientations,learning strategies,and study success

The purpose of the study was to bridge the gap between situational and more general measures in investigating university students' studying. More precisely, the aim was to establish a connection between students' situational reaction tendencies and their general study orientations. Furthermore, situational reaction tendencies were related to the applied learning strategies and actual study success. The participants in the study were 578 second year students in a multi-disciplinary Finnish university. A questionnaire was used including the Inventory of General Study Orientations (IGSO) and measures concerning situational reaction tendencies, learning strategies, self-efficacy and self-evaluated expertise. Archive data from the university's student register were utilized to objectively examine study success. The following four groups of students with differing situational reaction tendencies were distinguished: performance-oriented students, task-oriented students, socially oriented students and avoiders. It was found that the groups differed from each other regarding general study orientations, applied learning strategies and study success.     

Relationships between information seeking and context: A qualitative study of Internet searching and the goals of personal development

Little research has explored how exactly information processes relate to their context. Context is defined as all those things which are not an inherent part of information phenomena, but which nevertheless bear some relation to these. This article addresses the issue by discussing empirical findings from a study on Internet searching and personal development. The purpose of the article is to construct a general typology for researching the links between information seeking and its context. Grounded analysis of the whole corpus revealed 11 different relationships between Internet searching and the goals of personal development. Because these seem to be quite generalizable to information seeking in other contexts (e.g., parenting or location), too, they were then abstracted into four generic relationships: detachment, unity, direction, and interaction. The classifications are offered as tools for understanding information seeking more contextually and for conducting further research in this area.     

Structural Development of Finnish Universities: Achieving Competitiveness and Academic Excellence

This paper discusses strategic instruments that are used to enhance the competitiveness of Finnish universities in the context of globalisation, internationalisation and commercialisation of research and education. The Finnish higher education system is currently undergoing a major policy reform, which aims to enhance the competitiveness of Finnish universities through structural development. This article focuses specifically on three themes of structural development: institutional cooperation and mergers between universities; stratification and differentiation; and changes in governance and leadership. Three ongoing projects are used as illustrations.     

Teaching pupils of qualitatively differing cognitions

The processus involved in the block design test were analysed from a cognitive, information processing view-point. To infer the existence and nature of processes, we analysed the subjects' strategies for solving the problems of the test. We filmed the subjects while they performed the WISC R block design test and then we analysed the video-tapes. For each item and each subject, we obtain series of manipulations, which were coded and formalised, constituting a protocol. The analysis of protocols brings to evidence wide differences of strategies, associated with differences of the processes involved in solving the test's problems. This could explain the heterogeneity of the correlations between the block design test and the other tests of intelligence. Nevertheless, if we want to detect routinely individual strategies and processes, we'll have to automatize the registration, coding and analysis of performances.