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The Effect of WWW Document Structure on Students' Information Retrieval Cover

The Effect of WWW Document Structure on Students' Information Retrieval

By: Ian Brown  
Open Access
|Dec 1998

Abstract

Abstract: This experiment investigated the effect the structure of a WWW document has on the amount of information retained by a reader. Three structures common on the Internet were tested: one long page; a table of contents leading to individual sections; and short sections of text on separate pages with revision questions. Participants read information structured in one of these ways and were then tested on recall of that information. A further experiment investigated the effect that 'browsing' moving between pages has on retrieval. There was no difference between the structures for overall amount of information retained. The single page version was best for recall of facts, while the short sections of text with revision questions led to the most accurate inferences from the material. Browsing on its own had no significant impact on information retrieval. Revision questions rather than structure per se were therefore the key factor.

Reviewers: John Errington (U. Northumbria at Newcastle, UK), Xiufeng Liu (St. Francis Xavier U., CA), Sandra Wills (U. Wollongong, AU)
Interactive elements: The three Web document designs contrasted in the experiments are provided.
Interactive demonstrations: The websites contrasted in the experiments are explained in Sections 1.1.1 - 1.1.3 (Expt. 1), and 3.2 (Expt. 2), with links to the respective websites
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/1998-12 | Journal eISSN: 1365-893X
Language: English
Published on: Dec 3, 1998
Published by: Ubiquity Press
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 1 issue per year

© 1998 Ian Brown, published by Ubiquity Press
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Volume 1998 (1998): Issue 4