An Ecological Model to Understand the Variety in Undergraduate Students’ Personal Information Systems

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dc.citation.doihttps://doi.org/10.23962/10539/20327
dc.citation.epage11
dc.citation.issue15
dc.contributor.authorBackhouse, Judy
dc.contributor.authorHughes, Mitchell
dc.date.accessioned2016-05-03T14:58:02Z
dc.date.available2016-05-03T14:58:02Z
dc.date.issued2015-12-15
dc.description.abstractA first-year undergraduate course in Information Systems in a South African university includes an opportunity for students to reflect on their own use of information and personal information systems. Their reflections provide data about the technologies and tools that they use to find and manage everyday life information, as well as academic information, and about the sources of information they draw on. This paper analyses data collected over three years and reports on the dominant technologies and information sources that students use. We then adapt the ecological model of information seeking and use developed by Williamson (1998) to make sense of the diversity of information sources and students’ choices in engaging with them. The results show that students rely to a very small degree on traditional university information sources. The study offers insights into the information contexts and behaviour of students and argues for the importance of a flexible range of information sources to support students in the complex process of managing information for academic success. The results will be of interest to those involved in designing and delivering undergraduate programmes, as well as those providing information services and infrastructures.
dc.identifier.citationBackhouse, J., & Hughes, M. (2015). An ecological model to understand the variety in undergraduate students’ personal information systems. The African Journal of Information and Communication (AJIC), 15, 14-24. https://doi.org/10.23962/10539/20327
dc.identifier.issnISSN 2077-7213 (online version)
dc.identifier.issnISSN 2077-7205 (print version)
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10539/20327
dc.identifier.urihttps://doi.org/10.23962/10539/20327
dc.language.isoenen_ZA
dc.orcid.idBackhouse: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6269-7910
dc.orcid.idHughes: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5027-4294
dc.publisherLINK Centre, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburgen_ZA
dc.subjectpersonal information system, information behaviour, undergraduate students, information technology, information seeking, information sources, personal informatics
dc.titleAn Ecological Model to Understand the Variety in Undergraduate Students’ Personal Information Systemsen_ZA
dc.typeArticleen_ZA
ddi.analysisunitSouth African universities
ddi.cleanopsThe three data sets (2013, 2014 and 2015) were then imported into Atlas.ti for coding. A millennial coder was employed to identify and code each item on each picture. The coder’s brief was to identify the specific technology or application that was referenced in the pictures. It was important to use a coder who was familiar with the technologies and applications in use by the students and who was sufficiently “at home” online to be able to track down references (textual and graphical) to obscure applications and technologies. Once this initial coding was complete, the researchers created code families to group related concepts together
ddi.collmodeEducational measurements
ddi.collmodePictures were submitted electronically in a variety of formats. Some were drawn using software tools such as Word, PowerPoint or Visio and submitted in software-specific or pdf formats. Some students constructed collages or drew pictures freehand and scanned or photographed the results, submitting them in pdf or jpg formats. Students uploaded their pictures to the learning management system (LMS).
ddi.datacollectorBackhouse, Judy; Hughes, Mitchell
ddi.datakindqualitative
ddi.diststmtContact the editors to discuss reuse of the data in collaboration with the authors.
ddi.geogcoverSouth Africa
ddi.keywordpersonal information system, information behaviour, undergraduate students, information technology, information seeking, information sources, personal informatics
ddi.methodStudents are also asked to draw a “rich picture” of their own personal information system. Rich pictures are a tool used in Information Systems to depict the complexities of system components and their relationships (Avison & Fitzgerald, 2003) and are one of the Information Systems tools that students learn about during the course. Students were asked to draw a rich picture depicting the different sources of information and the tools to access and manage information that they were either currently using or intended to use during their university studies
ddi.sampprocIn total, 325 pictures were collected in 2013, 456 pictures in 2014, and 240 pictures in 2015.
ddi.timemethlongitudinal panel interval
ddi.timeprd2013-01-01 -2013-01-12
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AJIC Issue 15, 2015