Search engines and how students think they work

To investigate the nature of people’s understandings for how search engines work, we collected data from 232 undergraduate and graduate students. Students were asked to “draw a labeled sketch of how search engines work.” A reference model was constructed and each sketch was analyzed and compared against it for completeness. The paper presents preliminary results and discusses the implications for educational assessment and curriculum design on the one hand, and information system design on the other. Categories and Subject Descriptors

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: SIGIR
• Authors: Efthimis N. Efthimiadis, David G. Hendry
• Keywords: Graduate Students, People’s Understandings, Search Engines, SIGIR 2005