Title: Learners' perceptions on the importance of learning object metadata for relevance judgement

Authors: Panos Balatsoukas; Emmanouel Garoufallou; Anne Morris; Ann O'Brien; Stella Asderi; Rania Siatri

Addresses: Northwest Institute for Bio-Health Informatics, The University of Manchester, J. McFarlane Building, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 90L, UK ' Department of Library Science and Information Systems, Alexander Technological Educational Institute of Thessaloniki, Sindos, Thessaloniki, Greece ' Department of Information Science, Loughborough University, Bridgeman Building, Loughborough, Leics LE11 3TU, UK ' Department of Information Science, Loughborough University, Bridgeman Building, Loughborough, Leics LE11 3TU, UK ' American College of Thessaloniki, Library, 55510, Thessaloniki, Greece ' Department of Library Science and Information Systems, Alexander Technological Educational Institute of Thessaloniki, Sindos, Thessaloniki, Greece

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to investigate university students' perceptions on the importance of learning object metadata elements for judging the relevance of learning objects. In order to address this objective an online questionnaire survey was conducted using a clustered sampling technique. A total of 252 students responded to the questionnaire. Participants represented different disciplines (for example, from Humanities & Social Sciences to Sciences & Engineering), levels of familiarisation with the web (advanced and novice users) and educational level (postgraduates and undergraduates). The results showed that participants preferred content related and educational metadata elements as well as metadata elements about the date and the language of a learning object as opposed to technical metadata elements or metadata elements about the version of the learning object when judging the relevance of learning objects.

Keywords: learning object metadata; relevance judgement; user studies; educational technology; information seeking; surveys; information retrieval; learner perceptions; university students; higher education; learning objects; metadata elements.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMSO.2012.051490

International Journal of Metadata, Semantics and Ontologies, 2012 Vol.7 No.4, pp.283 - 294

Received: 02 Jan 2012
Accepted: 17 Oct 2012
Published online: 31 Dec 2014 *

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