EVALUATING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF A CONCEPT-BASED COMPUTER TUTORIAL FOROPAC USERS

In an experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of a concept-based comp uter tutorial for training OPAC users, the authors found that Universi ty of Toronto students who viewed the tutorial performed significantly better on search tasks than those who received no instruction. This p aper reports the results of a second experiment to investigate the eff ectiveness of the computer tutorial. Fifteen students viewed the compu ter tutorial. Another fifteen students served as a control group and d id not receive any instruction. The results showed no significant diff erences in performance between the students who viewed the computer tu torial and those who did not receive any instruction. We discuss the d ifferences between the results of the two experiments in terms of the characteristics of the participants and the characteristics of the OPA Cs. We also relate our findings to the findings of other studies on co ncept-based instruction and offer suggestions for future research.