The Effect of Web Search Result Display on Users’ Perceptual Experience and Information Seeking Performance

ABSTRACT

Adding multiple sources of information in the display of Web search results may negatively affect users’ perceptual experience and information-seeking behavior. This claim was established by investigating the impact of different Web search compositions on users’ ability to extract specific information. In this article, we assumed that the quantity and order of different compositions (areas) in the Web search results page may contribute to individual’s ability to find information relevant to their search queries. An eye-tracking device was used to observe and compare the perceptual behavior of 14 users in an information-seeking task. The results showed that the use of different compositions in the display of Web results page significantly influenced users’ perceptual experience by reducing their attention to the organic results area. The quantity of these compositions was found to greatly increase the cognitive load of users when attempting to retrieve information from the organic area, which negatively affects their information-seeking performance. Our finding provides a rationale for further studies to consider the impact of quantity and order of Web page compositions on individuals’ perceptual attention and cognitive load in information-seeking task settings.     

OER evaluation as a means of teaching information literacy in individual and small group settings

ABSTRACT

Open education resources represent a great opportunity to reduce textbook costs, but many of them have not been evaluated for quality. Librarians and former students in an introduction to engineering course collected and evaluated open education resources to supplement the course textbook in future semesters. Both searching for and evaluating these resources created opportunities for the librarians to evaluate information literacy skills of these students and to provide instruction to improve these skills.     

Spaces of emergent memory: Detroit’s 8 Mile wall and public memories of civil rights injustice

This article introduces emergent memory, a conceptual extension to rhetorics of public memory, to describe memory’s genesis in sites built without commemorative commitments. Examining Detroit’s “8 Mile Wall,” a site built to reinforce segregated housing, this project argues the rhetorical tenets of emergent memory present in this space. As a relic of segregated history, the wall symbolically recalls the city’s controversial past, but has recently been the subject of a local mural project to redefine the wall’s purpose. Some consider this a step toward reclamation, as it visually repositions the disturbing remnant. For others, the murals simply cannot overwrite troubling memories of the city’s discriminatory history. This essay uses emergent memory to describe how the wall’s complicated mnemonic legacy simultaneously harkens to a difficult history and how the mural additions use that same legacy to convey an optimistic future for Detroit and those marked by this urban space.     

An impulse to exploit: the behavioral turn in data-driven marketing

Industry advocates argue that by tailoring services and commercial solicitations to match media users’ personal interests, data-driven marketing benefits both consumers and businesses. This article shows, however, that advertisers and marketers who are taking up ideas and techniques from behavioral economics tell their clients a very different story about the aims and use of digital marketing and consumer surveillance. Listening in on this discourse demonstrates that some digital marketers conceptualize their own practices as forms of social control, appropriating concepts from behavioral economics to identify consumers’ cognitive and affective biases and target their vulnerabilities. Behavioral economics recognizes that economic decisions are not simply dictated by rational self-interest; rather, such choices depend on cognitive heuristics and habits, and can be manipulated through the design of “choice architecture.” This article discusses implications of the behavioral turn in data-driven marketing for critical advertising scholars, public advocates, and regulators.     

土木工程专业英语教学改革探讨

针对土木工程专业英语教学中存在的问题,从教学目标、教学内容、教学方法等方面进行了探讨,并提出了改革课程设置、实行“双语”教学的意义。     

对我校体育大专生教学基本功的调查与分析

本文对我校体育大专生教学基本功调查中存在的组织教学、体育实践能力较差等问题进行了分析,并提出加强教学基本功训练的具体措施。     

情报学取向的“数据科学与大数据技术”专业人才培养

[目的/意义]情报学作为计算性较强的人文社科学科，具备数据科学的特点，大数据相关技术能为情报学提供有效手段，因此，设立情报学取向的"数据科学与大数据技术"专业，培养具有大数据思维和扎实的情报学专业基础、掌握大数据处理技术及分析理论、并能将其应用于情报学理论与实践的复合型人才，能够促进情报学学科发展。[方法/过程]对国内外大数据相关专业的培养目标和课程设置模式进行调研，总结学科教育发展特色，结合国内的教学资源情况，设计情报学取向的大数据专业人才培养计划。[结果/结论]情报学与大数据既有联系又有不同，情报学为大数据提供了基础研究方法，促进了多源数据融合，拓宽了大数据的应用领域；大数据为情报学研究提供了更多的可能性、丰富了研究方法，提升了研究效率、扩大了研究范围。情报学取向的大数据与数据科学专业人才的培养，既有其必要性，又有其不可替代性。学科体系需进一步改革创新，设立更多紧密结合大数据与情报学专业的新兴课程，如文献大数据分析、用户大数据研究等，系统地培养学生将情报学领域知识与计算机技术和大数据技术融合创新的能力。     

The role of a digital engineering platform in appropriating the creation of new work-related mind-set and organisational discourse in a large multi-national company

This paper reports on a case study involving a strategic and innovative approach to creation of an in-house multifaceted digital engineering platform (the DEP) in overcoming a number of organisational problems at a multinational engineering company. The DEP was to be used strategically for simplifying the operational complexity and to create and appropriate new work-related mind-set and new organisational discourse to achieve homogenous working across the organisation, which is a huge challenge. The need for this system emerged from the need to resolve many organisational services related problems that carried phenomenal amount of processes, health and safety risks and to regulate, and, control the running of engineering project. Research data were collected using a longitudinal case study approach over a period of six months. In order to make sense of how the DEP helped the organisation, the study used certain elements of Extended Structuration Theory as a lens to assess the case study. This research discovered that the DEP succeeded in creating and appropriating work-related mind-set and organisational discourse. It also had real influence on working processes and employees at all levels while encouraging transparency, responsiveness, agility and accountability. It continues to help the organisation to govern, manage and maintain good standard of service but many barriers still remain.     

Idea generation in biomedical engineering courses using Design Heuristics

ABSTRACT

With increasing demand for improved medical equipment and healthcare, next-generation biomedical engineers need strong design skills. Equipping biomedical engineering students with tools for idea generation and development can increase student design success. Design Heuristics are an ideation tool developed through empirical studies of product designs. While identified in the mechanical engineering space, Design Heuristics may be applicable in biomedical engineering design. In our study, we implemented a Design Heuristics session during upper-level undergraduate and first-year graduate biomedical engineering design courses. We examined the applicability of Design Heuristics within individual and team concept generation contexts. The findings demonstrated that biomedical engineering students were able to use Design Heuristics to generate multiple concepts, and that initial concepts produced using Design Heuristics were carried over into final team design. The results support the applicability of Design Heuristics to student idea generation in biomedical engineering design.