Correlation research question: For University Students

1. Correlation research question

“The impact of the establishment of Information Commons in the Hong Kong academic libraries on the development of the university students' computer literacy skills”

2. Why is correlation research?

The relationship between [variable X] and [variable Y] among [type of subjects] The relationship between [the establishment of Information Commons in Hong Kong academic libraries] and [development of computer literacy skills] among [university students]

3 . How could data for the correlated variables be collected?

a. Participants
Participants in this study can be 120 students from 4 academic libraries (HKIEd, HKU, HKUST and Lingnan) which provide e-learning facilities ). 30 new students from each of these institutions, i.e. a total of 120, form the final sampling group.

b. Instruments
Data will be derived from questionnaires returned by the respondents. And reference librarians will give their expertise assessment on students performance at the beginning and the end of the research period.

c. Design
i. The data collecting period last for one year. The sampling group, new students, will be asked to conduct the 1st set of questionnaires in which contains demographic items and a set of questions as set by a group of reference librarians. Individual participants will be asked to answer a series of questions as set by a group of reference librarians.

ii. Another set of questionnaires for the same group will be conducted after 1 year, which includes a series of items designed to assess the respondents' perceptions of the efficacy and usefulness of information commons in their learning. Lastly, librarians will ask them to perform some tasks individually and compares their performance they did 1 year ago.

4. Argument of how answer to that question can contribute to improvements in some aspect of education/teaching and learning?
a. Goal
As an important goal for this correlation research, it seeks to predict a possible and positive relationship between [the establishment of Information Commons in Hong Kong academic libraries] and [development of computer literacy skills] among [university students].

b. Proof of Significance
As compared with a general computer barn/laboratory/where where usually no collaborative service is provided, information commons seeks to to foster continued learning outside classroom and so it integrates reference services, language centre and technical support to help users to improve their skills and abilities in learning and research inquiry. With this support, students are much benefited under a service-and-technology-rich environment to use electronic information resources effectively, and more important is to facilitate their experiment with new information technology, and to enhance collaborative learning and group presentations. In view of the above consideration, the study intends to find out whether the establishment and services provided by these 4 local academic libraries help enhancing students' computer literacy skills. The findings may help drawing some important areas for librarians so that they know how Information Commons can further be improved to address the need of the students in order to help them dealing with their course work and collaborative study more efficiently.