Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Saturday, November 21, 2009
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version | Audio | Blogs
Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Saturday, November 21, 2009 ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version | Audio | Blogs | |
| Update at 1245 hrs (IST) Variety Search engines key aid for learning process: Study WASHINGTON: Does your kid spend a lot of time using search engines? Don’t worry. He is only gaining more information, as a new study has found that searching tasks enhances our knowledge. While examining the search habits of 72 participants who conducted a total of 426 searching tasks, researchers from Penn State University have found that search engine use is not just part of our daily routine but it has also become part of our learning process. The researchers found that search engines are primarily used for fact-checking users’ own internal knowledge, meaning that they are part of the learning process rather than simply a source of information. They also found that people’s learning styles can affect how they use search engines. “Our results suggest the view of Web searchers having simple information needs may be incorrect,’’ lead author Mr Jim Jansen told journal Information Processing and Management. “Instead, we discovered that users applied simple searching expressions to support their higher-level information needs,’’ he said. Mr Jansen said the results of this study provide useful information about how search engine use has evolved over the past decade and clues about how to design better search engines to address users’ learning needs in the future. “If we can incorporate cognitive, affective and situational aspects of a person, there is the potential to really move search performance forward,'' he said, adding “at its core, we are getting to the motivational elements of search’’. — PTI Prev: Allahabad Bank plans Rs 500-cr Upper Tier II bonds Business Line | NUS Index | |
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