Individual differences of science teachers and interactive video retrieval

This article aims to examine how the interactions and perceptions of users from a defined domain, i.e. science education, vary across different groups of teachers while retrieving video. Given the prevalence of digital resources in use in education today, it is critical to assess users’ perspectives and experiences for retrieving information across different contexts and individual user groups.

Interactive search experiments with 28 users were performed. A pre-experiment questionnaire collected the demographic information used to form groups for comparison in the present study. Users attempted six experimenter-developed topics using a prototype video retrieval system; experimental measures were recorded, including all actions, completion rates, errors and durations. Users rated their experiences and levels of satisfaction with different aspect of the system after each search topic. Data analyses included mean comparisons across the different groups.

A variety of influences emerged from the results, including significant variations among teachers’ interactions, levels of satisfaction and expectations across different groups of users.

Understanding the interactions and perceptions when retrieving digital video provides insights for information professionals on how to better support the needs of different users. If systems are not taking into account users and context, there can be a mismatch between the needs of users and interactive systems, which can lead to low perceptions and further underuse of digital resources.

Although similar influences on digital libraries have been analysed in other contexts, they have not been directly assessed, as they specifically pertain to experiences with and perceptions of video.