Designing for Users: Online Information Literacy in the Middle East

Document Type

Article

Source of Publication

Portal

Publication Date

1-1-2010

Abstract

Librarians from Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) report on an empirical evaluation of the relevance and value of Infoasis (http://www.zu.ac.ae/infoasis), a Web-based information literacy tutorial developed and tailored to the Arab student population of the Emirates. After the successful implementation of this project, questions arose about the value of maintaining Infoasis, given the time intensive nature of this activity. Was the tutorial relevant and useful to students? Was it being used by students, and what factors contributed to the engagement (or not) of students with the tutorial? Survey results concluded that students found the tutorial both relevant and useful to their studies and that the design features tailored to the needs of the undergraduate Arab population were effective in ensuring usability. Reasons for poor usage of Infoasis outside the classroom are discussed. Copyright © 2010 by The Johns Hopkins University Press.

ISSN

1531-2542

Publisher

Johns Hopkins University Press

Volume

10

Issue

1

First Page

57

Last Page

73

Disciplines

Library and Information Science

Scopus ID

75949103432

Indexed in Scopus

yes

Open Access

no

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