This article provides a critical analysis of some of the key theories and assumptions that underpin prevailing approaches to the concept of "information user" in contemporary information research and professional practice, suggesting that they continue to reflect a tacitly systems-oriented focus. The author draws on the Sense-Making…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to make a scientific contribution to web information retrieval (IR). Design/methodology/approach: A multiagent system for web IR is proposed based on new technologies: Hierarchical Small-Worlds (HSW) and Possibilistic Networks (PN). This system is based on a possibilistic qualitative approach which extends the…

Introduction: Investigates how effectively Web search engines index new sites from different countries. The primary interest is whether new sites are indexed equally or whether search engines are biased towards certain countries. If major search engines show biased coverage it can be considered a significant economic and political problem because…

The need to educate a competitive workforce is a global problem. In the US, for example, despite billions of dollars spent to improve the educational system, approximately 35% of students never finish high school. The drop rate among some demographic groups is as high as 50-60%. At the college level in the US only 30% of students graduate from…

This article will discuss the issues concerning the storage, retrieval and use of multimedia technology in dance, and how semantic web technologies can support those requirements. It will identify the key aims and outcomes of four international telematic dance projects, and review the use of reflective practice to engage students in their learning…

Today, search engines are embedded into all aspects of digital world: in addition to Internet search, all operating systems have integrated search engines that respond even as you type, even over the network, even on cell phones; therefore the importance of their efficacy and efficiency cannot be overstated. There are many open possibilities for…

Task analytic theories of graph comprehension account for the perceptual and conceptual processes required to extract specific information from graphs. Comparatively, the processes underlying information integration have received less attention. We propose a new framework for information integration that highlights visual integration and cognitive…

This study reported an investigation of eighth graders' (14-year-olds) web searching strategies and outcomes, and then analyzed their correlations with students' web experiences, epistemological beliefs, and the nature of searching tasks. Eighty-seven eighth graders were asked to fill out a questionnaire for probing epistemological beliefs (from…

Interpreting a verb-phrase ellipsis (VP ellipsis) requires accessing an antecedent in memory, and then integrating a representation of this antecedent into the local context. We investigated the online interpretation of VP ellipsis in an eye-tracking experiment and four speed-accuracy tradeoff experiments. To investigate whether the antecedent for…

When remembering past choices, people tend to attribute positive features to chosen options and negative features to rejected options. The present experiments reveal the important role beliefs play in memory reconstruction of choices. In Experiment 1, participants who misremembered which option they chose favored their believed choice in their…

Student evaluations to measure the teaching effectiveness of instructor's are very frequently applied in higher education for many years. This study investigates the factors associated with the assessment of instructors teaching performance using two different data mining techniques; stepwise regression and decision trees. The data collected…

As individuals become more and more comfortable mediating all kinds of situations online and through various technologies, their virtual selves increasingly overlap their "real" lives. Posting a "happy birthday!" message on Facebook is as automatic as dropping a card in the mail. E-mailing relevant links to co-workers happens as naturally as…

The nature and scope of available documents are changing significantly in many areas of document analysis and retrieval as complex, heterogeneous collections become accessible to virtually everyone via the web. The increasing level of diversity presents a great challenge for document image content categorization, indexing, and retrieval.…

With the increase in available educational data, it is expected that Learning Analytics will become a powerful means to inform and support learners, teachers and their institutions in better understanding and predicting personal learning needs and performance. However, the processes and requirements behind the beneficial application of Learning…