Collaborative Information Seeking in Digital Libraries, Learning Styles, Users’ Experience, and Task Complexity

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between collaborative information seeking and users’ learning style preferences and their experience of information systems. The study investigates the role of four different factors including learning style, task complexity, and user experience in collaborative information seeking in digital environments. Sixty participants (30 pairs) were randomly chosen from volunteer graduate students of Kharazmi University (Iran). Participants completed Kolb’s learning style questionnaire and a user experience questionnaire and then performed two information seeking tasks (one simple and one difficult) in a lab setting. They could exchange information with their partners or a librarian using Skype. The sessions were recorded using Camtasia. The results showed that with an increase in task difficulty, collaborative information seeking activities increased and more interactions with partners and the librarian occurred. The number of executive help-seeking requests was higher than the number of instrumental help-seeking requests. This research confirms that learning style is related to the way users interact with the digital library and help seeking. The research showed that in difficult tasks, the differences among users with different learning styles become more evident, and that generally interactions increase in more difficult tasks. Among the learning styles, the accommodating style had the highest number of relationships with collaborative information seeking variables. Most of the statistically significant relationships between users’ prior computer experience and collaborative information seeking variables were related to the time variable.