EVALUATING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF A CONCEPT-BASED COMPUTER TUTORIAL FOR OPAC USERS

In an experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of a concept-based computer tutorial for training OPAC users, the authors found that University of Toronto students who viewed the tutorial performed significantly better on search tasks than those who received no instruction. This paper reports the results of a second experiment to investigate the effectiveness of the computer tutorial. Fifteen students viewed the computer tutorial. Another fifteen students served as a control group and did not receive any instruction. The results showed no significant differences in performance between the students who viewed the computer tutorial and those who did not receive any instruction. We discuss the differences between the results of the two experiments in terms of the characteristics of the participants and the characteristics of the OPACs. We also relate our findings to the findings of other studies on concept-based instruction and offer suggestions for future research.