Presents a metric for comparing the performance of common classes of Internet information retrieval tools, including human indexed catalogs of Web resources and automatically indexed databases of Web pages. The benefit of the proposed metric is that it is relevance-based, and it facilitates the comparison of the performance of different classes of…

The concept of premature discovery in science entails the publication of an important idea which remains uncited for a long period. Thereafter, a deluge of citations of its substance would occur. An overlooked example concerns the discovery in 1963 of how lung cancer cells stimulate the formation of new lymph vessels in man. Subsequently called…

This study explores a labelling feature that allows students to tag parts of their online messages. Data comes from four sequentially offered sessions of a graduate education course. Students engaged in two to three online activities in groups of three or four. Students (n = 53) contributed from 0 to 56 labels (M = 12.42, SD = 13.50) and 18 to 114…

Corpus consultation is gaining in prominence as a language learning tool. This approach to language analysis has made its way into the language classroom where its presence ranges from the presentation of printed concordance data with accompanying tasks to the direct use of concordancing software by learners themselves to carry out analyses of…

This chapter looks at the development and nature of learning objects, meta-tagging standards and taxonomies, learning object repositories, learning object repository characteristics, and types of learning object repositories, with type examples. (Contains 1 table.)

Keying in the search term "Martin Luther King" on Google would result in retrieving martinlutherking.com as the topmost hit. At first glance, it seems like a neutral informational site, but clicking on a few articles will unmask the hate. This site, which is owned by Don Black, a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, references King as a…

Theories about reflective thinking and deep-surface learning abound. In order to arrive at the definition for "reflective thinking toward deep learning," this study establishes that reflective thinking toward deep learning refers to a learner's purposeful and conscious activity of manipulating ideas toward meaningful learning and knowledge…

We contend that managers make better decisions when they are better able to tap into their vast storehouses of knowledge than their peers can. More specifically, we contend that accessing their tacit knowledge has the most noticeable and positive impact on their decision quality. Furthermore, techniques for better accessing knowledge can be…

After seeing growing frustration among inexperienced undergraduate researchers searching a popular aggregated interdisciplinary database, the authors questioned whether the leading interdisciplinary databases are serving undergraduates' needs. As a preliminary exploration of this question, the authors queried vendors, analyzed their marketing…

The study in this paper was carried out in the framework of an evidence-based continuous professional development (CPD) programme in which teachers documented evidence about their practice in a portfolio. The context of the CPD was related to the "Learning Skills for Science" (LSS) programme, which advocates the incorporation of…

These days, "data-driven decision making" is on every school district's buzzword bingo game board. Accountability pressures and lean budgets make translating data into information a major focus of school systems that are trying to improve district outcomes in all areas. As such, data warehousing has become an essential district tool. Historically…

Three experiments investigated whether retrieval of information about different dimensions of a visual object varies as a function of the perceptual properties of those dimensions. The experiments involved two perception-based matching tasks and two retrieval-based matching tasks. A signal-to-respond methodology was used in all tasks. A stochastic…

Since July 1978 the general reference section of the Pennsylvania State University library has compiled statistical information related to the use of online searching for reference purposes. An evaluation form completed by the librarian for each online reference search recorded such information as search date; status of requestor; printed sources…

This report provides a brief general summary of progress in a 2-year project renewing earlier work on the development of Individualized Instruction for Data Access (IIDA)--a system for teaching online searching techniques for bibliographic data bases--as well as an in-depth report on the IIDA computer system design. The Connector for Networked…

Focuses on the training of students in online bibliographic searching as introduced by school library media centers. The online process, teaching students to search, search steps, negative and positive aspects, and implications for school library media programs in three areas (student instruction, collection development, service goals) are…