Our Experience with User Experience: Exploring Staffing Configurations to Conduct UX in an Academic Library

ABSTRACT

A research project was undertaken by a university library system to develop a sustainable user experience strategy. A task force was convened to conduct a pilot project with members from both libraries in the system to assess staffing responsibilities, guidelines, processes, and data-gathering procedures. The team tested an electronic resources list common to both libraries. In describing the methods employed by the task force in their research, this article outlines the benefits and drawbacks of staffing configurations to initiate user experience practices in an academic library setting.     

Rethinking the work and training of special education teachers: Colorado,USA, viewed from a Scottish perspective

ABSTRACT

Colorado, the USA and Scotland are alike in many ways. Both have a relatively small population (3.3 and 5 million respectively) and, though Colorado is bigger than even the entire United Kingdom, both are largely rural, with most people living in the central area. The educational challenges which they face are, as in most advanced nations today, determined by considerations of economy as well as of philosophy and these pressures have led to changes in the delivery of special educational services, the way teachers are certified and the content of their training. This article examines these changes and concludes that Colorado has been more radical in the reorganization of its service delivery and certification of teachers, with changes in the schools being the stimulus to change in the state administration of education and thus the training provided by the universities. In Scotland, on the other hand, change in schools has been more gradual, but the education authorities and the colleges have had a greater hand in the process.     

Experimental Procedures in Test Evaluation

Specific learning behaviors used during peer tutoring and the relationship of those behaviors to the degree of learning achieved were examined. Audiotape recordings of 20 tutoring pairs were analyzed for behaviors exhibited by tutors and tutees. Three stepwise multiple regression analyses were performed to determine which behaviors were significantly related to the test scores of the tutor, the tutee, and the total score of the pair, respectively. There was only partial overlap between the most frequently used behaviors and the behaviors found to be predictive of achievement. The possible relationships between the predictive behaviors and learning processes during tutoring are discussed.     

Applications of the Hotelling T2 Statistic to Designs Involving Multiple Measures on Two Dimensions

Multiple measures taken on subjects are usually classified along two dimensions: (1) measures on the same dependent variable taken at different periods of time or occasions; and (2) measures on different dependent variables taken at one testing or observation period. In this paper an appropriate procedure for the analysis of “multivariate repeated measures” designs, i.e. designs in which measures are taken along both dimensions simultaneously, is discussed. Examples are given of the application of the procedure to quasi-experimental time-series designs and to the problem of determining rater agreement when a group of individuals are rated on more than one variable.     

Consolidation and Transfer of Learning After Observing Hand Gesture

Children who observe gesture while learning mathematics perform better than children who do not, when tested immediately after training. How does observing gesture influence learning over time? Children (n = 184, ages = 7–10) were instructed with a videotaped lesson on mathematical equivalence and tested immediately after training and 24 hr later. The lesson either included speech and gesture or only speech. Children who saw gesture performed better overall and performance improved after 24 hr. Children who only heard speech did not improve after the delay. The gesture group also showed stronger transfer to different problem types. These findings suggest that gesture enhances learning of abstract concepts and affects how learning is consolidated over time.     

Building Relationships through Communities of Practice: Museums and Indigenous People

Abstract This paper explores the theory of “communities of practice” and how the ideas contained in it could be applied to museums, by demonstrating how a key stakeholder group, Indigenous people, have been involved with and engaged in the work of the Australian Museum, Sydney, over the past 30 years. It is suggested that the processes museums have developed in building relationships with Indigenous people, particularly at the practitioner level, could form a template for how museums make themselves relevant to broader communities through active engagement with multiple communities of practice.     

Higher-Order Factor Analytic Perspectives on Users' Perceptions of Library Service Quality

The SERVQUAL measure was developed by Parasuraman, Berry, and Zeithaml (SERVQUAL: A multiple-item scale for measuring customer perceptions of service quality. Journal of Retailing, 64, 12–40) to measure perceptions of service quality, originally in the retailing sector. Libraries and other educational institutions, however are also service providers. Librarians, in particular, have recently become increasingly interested in measuring quality of service as the ultimate assessment of library performance, as against more traditional measures of performance such as mere counts of various holdings. The present study explored SERVQUAL score validity in the library service context using data from 596 users representing three user groups and measurement at three times over six years. Second-order factor analysis provided mixed results as regards the psychometric integrity of SERVQUAL scores applied within the library service context.     

Resource allocation to government documents departments in academic libraries

Resource allocation to documents departments in academic libraries is not a purely rational process. This lack of rationality leads to wide variation in the local levels of support upon which the GPO depository system depends. This article demonstrates these variations and suggests how documents librarians may change the levels of support their departments receive from sources within and beyond their libraries.