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- Johansson, Christina, 1965, et al.
(författare)
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Information Needs and Behaviour of PhD students at Chalmers University of Technology: A Survey
- 2016
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Ingår i: The Fourth European Conference on Information Literacy (ECIL) October 10th-13th, 2016, Prague, Czech Republic: Abstracts. - 9788027005307 ; , s. 166-
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This PechaKucha presents the initial findings of a research project which attempts to map PhD students’ information needs and behaviour at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. The outcome of the project will help us redesign and update our Information Literacy course in collaboration with the Innovation Office on campus. The library has a long tradition in offering Information Literacy courses for its PhD students and has done so since the early 1990s. However, as the course is now part of a Generic Transferable Skills course package which is offered to all PhD students, an update of the course to fit the new context is necessary. The basis for our presentation is an online survey (Dilek-Kayaoglu, 2014; Rafique and Mahmood, 2015) targeting all currently enrolled PhD students. The method used for the data analysis is the compiling and comparison of descriptive statistics involving variables relevant for this target group. More specifically, the survey questions concerned information behaviour (Wilson, 2000) in connection to: (a) literature reviews/thesis writing; (b) resources and information-seeking methods such as databases, books and e-books, web search engines, patents, data visualisations, informal channels, text mining; (c) bibliometrics, strategic publishing and open access; (d) reference managing; (e) library use; (f) information ethics and copyright; (g) scholarly information needs for the profession.In our PechaKucha we will present the most significant outcomes from the questionnaire with the aid of animations, table and graphs. The statistical significance of variables such as research areas, years of study, previous attendance at our information literacy course and at the research utilisation course has also been taken into account in the data analysis (Heinström, 2002). Based on the initial survey, we will proceed later on in 2016 with the second part of this research project, a qualitative study with focus groups involving 10-12 PhD students. From the semi-structured interviews with the focus groups we will create personas, which will guide the design and development for our course as well as keep the needs of the doctoral students at the forefront.
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| 2. |
- Johansson, Christina, 1965, et al.
(författare)
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Information Needs, Information behaviour, and Scholarly Information Literacy amongst PhD Students: An Interview-Based Study
- 2017
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This Pecha Kucha presents the results of the second part of a research project mapping PhD students’ information needs and behaviour at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. The study also covers the topic of scholarly information literacy defined as the information-related skills, abilities and competences needed to achieve the PhD degree and develop as a researcher (Association of College and Research Libraries, 2016). The findings from the first part of this project were presented at ECIL 2016 (Johansson & Schirone, 2016). The basis for this presentation is one pilot and nine semi-structured interviews.The interviews were conducted with doctoral students from the departments of Computer Science, Chemistry, Technology Management, Architecture, Applied Physics and Applied Mechanics and were 45 minutes long. Amongst the respondents was also an industrial PhD student (i.e., employed at a private company) who provided useful insights on the subject of information literacy in the workplace. The questions in the interview guide were semi-structured and mirrored the online survey conducted for part one of this project. The different sections in the interview covered topics such as demographics, library use, how to review the literature, publishing, Open Science, how to stay up-to-date and patents as an information source. The interviews were fully transcribed using speech-to-text converter software and imported in the qualitative analysis software NVivo for coding. We clustered the most recurring codes into main themes for the subsequent text analysis (Sundin, 2008; Pilerot, 2015; Pilerot and Limberg 2011).Our presentation will be a visual interpretation of the central themes which emerged from the data analysis. Dominant findings from the interviews include, but are not limited to, the following: (a) PhD students regard personal contacts with peer researchers and supervisors as highly important; (b) conferences are valuable information-sharing venues; (c) young researchers are affected by information overload which results in current awareness tools and services being unsubscribed; and (d) PhD students would benefit from additional research data literacy instructions.ReferencesAssociation of College and Research Libraries. (2016). Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframeworkJohansson, C., & Schirone, M. (2016). Information Needs and Behaviour of PhD students at Chalmers University of Technology: A Survey. Pecha-Kucha presented at the The European Conference on Information Literacy 2016, October 10-13, Prague.Pilerot, O. (2015). Information sharing in the field of design research. In Proceedings of ISIC, the Information Behaviour Conference, Leeds, 2-5 September, 2014: Part 2, (paper isic26). Retrieved from http://InformationR.net/ir/20-1/isic2/isic26.html Pilerot, O., & Limberg, L. (2011). Information sharing as a means to reach collective understanding A study of design scholars' information practices. Journal of Documentation, 67(2), 312-333. doi:10.1108/00220411111109494Sundin, O. (2008). Negotiations on information-seeking expertise - A study of web-based tutorials for information literacy. Journal of Documentation, 64(1), 24-44. doi:10.1108/00220410810844141
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