The impact of dyslexia on the information-seeking behaviour of undergraduate students

Abstract

This research aims to identify the impact of dyslexia on the information-seeking behaviour of undergraduate students within the context of preparation for a HE assignment by understanding the barriers to information-seeking and the workarounds employed. This will allow recommendations for support, through instruction and system design, to be made. A qualitative approach has been adopted to gain a rich, in-depth understanding of how dyslexia impacts information-seeking and naturalistic data has been collected. Participant captured screen recordings with follow up interviews have been collected and retrospective think aloud sessions are ongoing with undergraduate students with dyslexia. Initial findings suggest that dyslexia is causing barriers to information-seeking due to cognitive and affective challenges. Barriers identified from initial findings included difficulties attributed to spelling and memory difficulties which could manifest in the focus formulation phase of Kuhlthau's ISP and Bates' berrypicking model. Affective barriers relating to self-efficacy while information-seeking that could cause the information-seeker frustration were also found. There were indications that workarounds are being employed to try and overcome the difficulties to information-seeking caused by dyslexia, such as the use of query building aids, and the effectiveness of these workarounds for information-seekers with dyslexia will be investigated in future work.