Students are shunning multi-million pound high-tech college library services in favour of cheaper external resources such as Google and YouTube in order to carry out information searches when studying, research to be published at the 17th annual conference of the Association for Learning Technology at the University of Nottingham in Nottingham reveals.

Researchers at Middlesex University say students find many university and college systems too complex, time-consuming and cumbersome for their research. Such problems create barriers to access and distract them from critically analysing and evaluating resources, so they resort to approaches with which they are familiar.

In their research paper to the ALT conference, "Into something rich and strange – making sense of the sea-change", which runs from 7-9 September, the authors urge higher education institutions to sharpen-up their act if they are to avoid wasting precious resources and ensure students get the materials and support they need.

Seb Schmoller, Chief Executive of ALT, said: “This demonstrates the need for institutions to think carefully – as many are undoubtedly doing – about their users’ needs, recognising the growing gulf between traditionally organised library resources and resources available on the World Wide Web. Though the former provide a more solid base for research than the latter, without ease of use and openness of access, users will take the line of least resistance and rely instead on what they can find on the Web.”

The authors of the Middlesex University report comment: “People expect library resources to work in the same way as those available on the Internet, that is, simple and user friendly. Unless changes are made within library-subscribed (services), users will continue utilising the Internet resources missing the opportunity of accessing high quality scholarly materials.”

UK universities spend more than £80m a year on licenses for e-journals alone, yet few students ask librarians to help them access such resources. “Many had never met their subject librarian nor were they aware that the library provides subject support in finding information,” the researchers say.

Students find services such as Google, fast, universally available, not subject to “time-outs”, intuitive, and fault-tolerant; whereas college systems were often clumsy, with poor usability.

Users got easily exasperated if the results took them down the wrong path and said: It “irritates me”, “it wasted my time” and “I don’t like it”. In a number of cases, participants expressed annoyance, frustration and surprise when there were no relevant results yielded after a search on a subscribed database.

The report, Electronic resource discovery systems: do they help or hinder in searching for academic material, makes a series of recommendations for better support, training and access to information retrieval systems that are designed using common criteria and are easier to access.

More than 250 research papers, seminars and presentations will be debated by over 500 delegates at this year’s ALT conference.  Other research under discussion includes evidence of how institutions can raise standards of learning by using online peer assessment, how mobiles and smart technology have become essential tools for learning and the power of blogging as a research tool.

Four high profile keynote speakers and nine invited speakers of international repute lead debate at the conference next week at the University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK.

Keynote speakers
• Barbara Wasson, University of Bergen, Norway
• Professor Sugata Mitra, University of Newcastle, UK
• Donald Clark former CEO and a founder of Epic Group plc
• Professor Saul Tendler, University of Nottingham, UK

Invited speakers
• Hans-Peter Baumeister, Reutlingen University, Germany
• Heather Fry, Director of Education and Participation at the Higher Education Funding Council (HEFCE), UK
• Sudhir Giri, Head of Google Learning Labs, Google, UK
• Professor Martin Hall, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Salford
• Frank McLoughlin, Principal of City and Islington College, London
• Aaron Porter, President of the National Union of Students, UK
• Professor Josie Taylor, Director of the Institute of Educational Technology. The Open University, UK
• David White, University of Oxford, UK

Conference Co-chairs
• Vanessa Pittard, Director of e-Strategy, Becta, UK;
• Richard Noss, Professor of Mathematics Education at the Institute of Education, Co-director of the London Knowledge Lab, UK, and Director of the Technology Enhanced Learning phase of the Teaching and Learning Research Programme.

Seb Schmoller adds, “ALT’s purpose is to bring together researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners. What unites them is their focus on technology as an unavoidably important factor in learning, and on the need to make cost-effective and evidence-based decisions about deployment. The aim of the ALT conference, with its wide spectrum of invited and keynote speakers, and its huge range of submitted papers will help people at the sharp end of education in their decision-making and practice.”

The programme is available online at: http://www.alt.ac.uk/altc2010/timetable.html.

 For details on attendance, visit http://www.alt.ac.uk/altc2010 or email hayley.willis@alt.ac.uk