CHAPTER 2: OPERATIONALISATION OF THE KEY CONCEPTS AND
2.2 DEFINITIONS AND CONTEXTUALISATION OF CONCEPTS AND CONSTRUCTS
2.2.4 Search engines
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problems. This cannot only be applied in a classroom but can also be used in daily life.
2.2.3.4 The potential benefits of ICT for students
Information and communication technology affords an extensive benefit in supporting learning. Students become active and independent through the use of technology in learning. By having access to the internet at universities, students do not totally depend on their lecturers. Self-managed learning permits the students to be self- motivated and self-directed students who will be able to respond to the rapid change of information. The use of blogs, for example, can afford academics and students to be very acquainted to the issues and discussion in their fields. Technology also offers ways for dynamic and cooperative learning. By using the internet learning is not limited to the specific lectures, and our geographical locations. Students access the internet anytime and anywhere. As indicated by Uhomoibhi (2006:9), e-learning allows the students to get information quicker regardless of time and space. Information and communication technology also allows collaboration between students and scholars from various institutions of higher learning.
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many documents as possible (Oyewole & Alegbeleye, 2018). Another programme, called an indexer, there after reads these documents and generates an index centered on the key words contained in each document. Each search engine uses a copyrighted system to create its indices such that only relevant and key words match results are returned for each search.
SimilarWeb and Alexa highlighted that in late 2017 and early 2018, Google was still the most accessed search engine by the cyber society per day (Net MarketShare, 2018). Top 10 search engines with the greatest market share in 2018 were Google (71.98%), Baidu (14.04%), Bing (7.76%), Yahoo (4.44%), Yandex (0.92%), Ask (0.33%), DuckDuckGo (0.23%), Naver (0.12%), American Online (0.05%) and Dogpile (0.04%) (Net MarketShare, ibid.). In the institutions of higher learning, one aspect of the valuation in a web-based university ranking emphasises the significance of the presence of an institution on the internet (Kurniasih, Hasyim, Wulandari, Setiawan &
Ahmar, 2018). Thus, universities offer numerous information for the public online. Not only information about institutions, but student learning resources are also widespread on the internet. Al-Hariri and Al-Hattami (2015) emphasise that search engines have become entries used to track countless information required by students. Crof, Metzler and Strohman (2015) state that most students depend on search engines and other online learning resources.
Kimmon (2012) describes a search engine as a Web site that connects and organize contents from all over the internet. On the ground of these explanation, search engines can be defined as Web user assistants to locate and retrieve information. Like any other assistant, the extent to which they are able to help depends on the degree to which the users are able to seek information. Hence, communicating with search engines is a serious part of the search process. The acquaintance of how to issue search query is a key influence to getting the required information from the internet.
The Spiders Apprentice (2004) as well as Jato and Oseriri (2013) identified and explained the following as ways by which search queries could be issued in order to find desired information on the internet: key word search: refining a search; relevance ranking; meta tags and concepts based searching as briefly described hereunder:
a) Refining a search: Many search engines offer two different forms of searches;
basic and advanced. In a basic search, one only has to insert a key word without
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sieving through any menus of additional preferences. Advanced search options are different from one search engine to another, however some of the options embrace the capacity to search on more than one word, giving more weight to one search term than you give to another, and to eliminate words that might be likely to ruin the results (Jato & Oseriri, 2013).
b) Relevancy ranking: Many search engines yield results with confidence of relevancy ranking. In simple terms, they list the results based on how closely they match the query (The Spiders Apprentice, 2004).
c) Meta tag: some of search engines are now indexing web documents by the Meta tag in the documents’ Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) at the beginning of the document in the head tag (Jato & Oseriri, 2013). This implies that the web page author can have some influence over which key words are used to index the document, and even in the description of the document that appears when it comes up as a search hit.
d) Concept-based search: Different from key word search systems, concept based search systems attempt to determine what you mean, not just what you say. In simple terms, a concept based search returns results on documents that are about the subject and/or theme one is exploring, even if the key words in the document do not accurately match the words one entered into the search system (Crof, Metzler & Strohman, 2015).
2.2.4.1 Role of search engines in higher education
In order to conduct an effective search, the researcher should understand the structure of the several search engines. Search engines do not always afford the right information, but rather often subject the user to an overflow of disorganized inappropriate data. All search engines support single-word queries. The user only types in a keyword and presses the search button. Again, most engines also support multiple-word queries. However, the engines differ as to whether and to what level they support Boolean operators (such as "and" and "or") and the level of detail supported in the query. More precise queries will enhance the relevance of the user's results.
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2.2.4.2 Students’ use of search engines for academic purposes
There is a growing body of research regarding students’ Web or databases use within the institution of higher learning. Some of the search engines are more used compared to others. There are numerous search engines being made available to the web.
Nevertheless, the question still remains unanswered why very few of the online search engines are being used. Research has shown that university students face challenges when surfing the internet for information, and the most key challenge being evaluating search results, and selecting sources and information (Margeret, 2012).
The difficulty in finding specific information on the internet is because of the growth and collection of information held and the way the information is organised. Though there are several search engines that make Web searches slight easier to use, there are still navigational problems for students because intelligent search skills are required to enable them to obtain access to appropriate resources and information (Nikolopoulou & Gialamas, 2011).
In a study on information seeking behaviour of final year students in south western Nigeria University Eke, Faustina and Anne (2019) revealed that Google, Wikipedia and Ask.com are the three most dominant used search engines with Google taking first spot. Another study on comparative analysis on six search engines comprising of three English search engines; Google, Yahoo, MSN and three French search engines;
Exalead, Voila and Dir.com (Dwivedi, 2018). The study found that Google and Yahoo were the best search engines compared to the rest.
Adithya, Mahadevamurthy and Hydar (2013) highlighted that level of awareness of numerous search engines to students in higher institution is very little. The survey also highlighted that students have very confused understanding of several search engines and its concept. Accordingly, many students are not using many available search engines. Oyewole and Alegbeleye (2018) posits that at the most basic level, undergraduate students lack the existence of the various search engines; many of the students according to Shearer are not familiar with the concept of various search engines. Onwuchukwa (2013) juxtaposed the performance of the major search engines, Google, Yahoo!, and MSN was found to be the greatest, with about 90 per cent of queries answered appropriately.
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Shearer (2012) indicates that the search engine industry in Africa is constrained by low internet bandwidth and high dial-up tariff, as well as high cost of Personal computers. The cost of bandwidth in Africa is much more compared to most of developed countries and students are faced with the challenges of slow internet connectivity, many sites disappear without any notification or warning, slow access is also one of key common challenges when a large number of users are connected to the internet (ibid.). The prospective of the search engine is also being limited by slow data transmission speed and by the difficulties of information management and retrieval posed by the presence of such massive amount of information (ibid.).
Suhaimi and Hussin (2017) state that information has increasingly come unfiltered.
This raised questions about authenticity, validity and reliability of information retrieved on the internet. Moreover, online information is available through various media, including graphical and textual. Users are faced with diverse and profuse information choices for their academic purposes. Information seeking involves uncertainty, which demand skills and efficacy when selecting some and leaving of the information. This is a problem, since the quality and aim may vary significantly. Musa (2014) investigated the impact of the internet on final year students’ research projects and revealed that most of the students used Google (40%) as their search engine. The following search engines extremely used by students is Yahoo (28%) and MSN (14%).
The study affirmed that the internet is one of a vital tool for research.