Is carousel interaction really usable?

In this paper a novel and significant study into the usability of carousel interaction in the context of desktop interaction is presented. Two equivalent prototypes in an e-commerce context were developed. One version had a carousel and the other version did not have a carousel. These were then compared with each other in an empirical experiment with 40 participants. The data collected were statistically analysed and overall results showed that in terms of performance the Web site version without carousel outperformed the version with carousel. Furthermore, the subjective preferences of the participants were strongly in favour of the without carousel version of the site. The results of this study make an important contribution to knowledge suggesting that in many cases implementing a carousel is not the best design decision. The results of this paper are particularly significant in relation to desktop versioned Web sites and goal-driven tasks. Serendipitous-type tasks and mobile versioned web sites used on mobile devices with touch screens were not part of the scope of this work.

Proposing methods to explore the evolution of the term ‘mHealth’ on the Danish Web archive

This article uses Internet archives to explore the emergence and spread of the term ‘mHealth’ (mobile health technologies) in the Danish Web domain from 2006 to 2018, focusing on the actors that contributed to its evolution. We propose three methods for investigating the Web pages and Web sites that employed the term ‘mHealth’. Our findings highlight temporal developments in the use of ‘mHealth’, with diverse actors using it, though none clearly dominated. The article attends to challenges in working with Web archive data, and presents methods that can be used by others wishing to engage empirically with Internet archives, which remain vast, but largely under-exploited resources.

Quality-Based Evaluation of Patient-Facing Online Education Materials Regarding Facial Filler Procedures

Injectable facial fillers have become tremendously more popular in recent years, and the Internet offers a proportional amount of consumer-facing educational material. This study sought to explore the quality of these online materials. The top 20 Web sites offering educational materials about facial filler were identified via Google search and sorted by source: Medical Professional Boards, Hospitals and Providers, Medical News and Reference, and Fashion. The materials were assessed for overall quality with the validated DISCERN instrument. The authors also assessed understandability and actionability (Patient Education Material Assessment Tool - PEMAT), accuracy, comprehensiveness, and readability (Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level and Flesch Reading Ease). The mean DISCERN score was 46.9 ± 7.6, which is considered “fair” quality educational material; above “poor,” but below “good” and “excellent.” Understandability and actionability scores were low, particularly with respect to visual aids. The materials were generally accurate (76–99%), but scored poorly in comprehensiveness, as 15% failed to mention any risks/adverse effects and only 35% mentioned cost. On average, readability was at an 11th grade level, far more complex than ideal (< 6th grade level). Information disseminated from seemingly reputable sources such as professional boards and hospitals/providers were not of higher quality or superior in any of the above studied domains. In conclusion, online educational materials related to injectable facial fillers are of subpar quality, including those from academic and professional organizations. Visual aids were particularly weak. The facial rejuvenation community should make a concerted effort to set a higher standard for disseminating such information.

Aligned but not integrated: UK academic library support to mental health and well-being during COVID-19

PurposeTo discover how UK academic libraries sought to support student mental health and well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic.Design/methodology/approachThe data was from a 24-question survey of UK universities distributed in May 2021 which received 56 responses from 47 different Higher Education Institution libraries. Descriptive statistics are combined with thematic analysis of open text comments.FindingsLibraries were undertaking a wide range of activities, targeted chiefly at students and broadcast via Twitter, other social media and library web sites. The problem being addressed was the stresses of studying in the context of the pivot online and isolation caused by social distancing. Digital well-being seemed also to be an increased concern. COVID-19 had proved the value of digital support but created a number of challenges such as loss of physical space, communication barriers and lack of extra resource. The role had a somewhat informal place in the organisation. Overall library activities were aligned but not strongly integrated into institutional efforts.Research limitations/implicationsThis was a study in one specific national context with a relatively limited number of total responses. There could be a non-response bias where respondents were doing more than was typical in the sector.Originality/valueThe paper is one of the first papers to gather sector wide data and move beyond case studies of what individual libraries due to support to mental health and well-being. It also offers a case study of the impacts of COVID-19 on management pointing to its catalysing the digital shift, creating constraints on resources and communication and prompting the emergence of staff well-being as a consideration in management decision making.

Preparing Business Education Teachers for Effective Implementation of Student-Centred Learning Strategies in the E- World

This paper highlights preparing business education teachers for effective implementation of student-centred learning strategies in the e- world. The paper defines terminologies such as Student-centred learning, e-learning and the need for linking ICT to education policies. It examines the world links program with student-centered teaching and learning web sites as well as discusses main characteristics of student-centered strategies and its popular types. It further discusses learning situations in the field of business education, teacher's role in student-centred strategies with implication of using student-centred strategies in Nigeria business education programme and analysis of threats to student-centred strategies. The paper concludes by making recommendation on the way forward among which Teacher should encourage student interaction in utilizing e-libraries or e-world at large in class participations. Institutions should encourage teachers in using student-centre strategies by sending them to seminal, conference/ workshop that base on this purpose. And institution should make available internet service 24/7 with power supply in the schools and staff quarters.

Medical Brigades to El Salvador and Honduras: Travel imaginaries and volunteer tourist recruitment

In this paper, I explore travel imaginaries in the recruitment of participants to short-term medical brigades in El Salvador and Honduras. I look in particular at how trip leaders and organization web sites frame the volunteer tourist experience, drawing on familiar, shared imaginaries of poor, backward international settings, and related performative interventions that echo white colonial relationships. Recruitment messaging offers little specific or informed sense of place, ignoring the national histories and socio-economic circumstances of the receiving countries. As a consequence, the health profiles and capacities of El Salvador and Honduras are finally obscured in favor of the valorized performance of visitors and externally-driven protocols and care. The efforts of some brigade sponsors and related organizations to improve health-care delivery to local communities, in particular fundraising among brigade participants and other donors, would seem to separate the link between travel and volunteerism. They continue, however, to reinforce broadly-held imaginaries of international poverty and economic backwardness and related rescue by the Global North. A more realistic understanding of Honduran and Salvadoran economies and politics remains elusive and requires a reorientation of voluntary engagement.

Unified Website Accessibility Assessment Framework

In this chapter, a unified web accessibility assessment (UWAA) framework and its software has been proposed. UWAA framework was developed by considering Web Content Accessibility Guideline 2.0 to evaluate accessibility of web sites by integrating more than one evaluation approach. Achecker tool as an automated evaluation approach and barrier walkthrough (BW) as an expert-based evaluation approach were integrated in the UWAA framework. The framework also provides suggestions to recover from the problems determined to the evaluators. The websites of three universities were evaluated to determine the framework's accuracy and consistency. It was revealed that the results obtained from automated and expert-based evaluation methods were consistent and complementary with each other. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that problems which cannot be determined by an automated tool but which can be detected by an expert can be identified by BW method.

A Framework for Automated Scraping of Structured Data Records From the Deep Web Using Semantic Labeling

The intent of this research is to come up with an automated web scraping system which is capable of extracting structured data records embedded in semi-structured web pages. Most of the automated extraction techniques in the literature captures repeated pattern among a set of similarly structured web pages, thereby deducing the template used for the generation of those web pages and then data records extraction is done. All of these techniques exploit computationally intensive operations such as string pattern matching or DOM tree matching and then perform manual labeling of extracted data records. The technique discussed in this paper departs from the state-of-the-art approaches by determining informative sections in the web page through repetition of informative content rather than syntactic structure. From the experiments, it is clear that the system has identified data rich region with 100% precision for web sites belonging to different domains. The experiments conducted on the real world web sites prove the effectiveness and versatility of the proposed approach.

A Path Analysis of Online Group Buying - Insights from Taiwan

Online group buying has emerged as a new bargaining power for many shoppers and become more so as a result of increasingly growing popularity of social networking and community-based web sites. Aside from significant quantity discounts, these buying groups can also potentially influence the manufacturers and retailers on policies, product characteristics, and services. We propose an Online Group Buying Decision Framework to model the overall process of online group buying. We use a major group buying community web site in Taiwan, ihergo.com, to test our framework and conduct follow-up analysis. Based on the proposed framework, we design a survey study in an attempt to gain more insights on group buying communities, their activities, and culture within these communities. We then perform a path analysis, a special technique of structural equation modeling (SEM), to study the relationship among the factors used in the survey. Our findings provide useful advice for online group buying sites to attract customers and increase sales.

Evaluating the Accessibility of Computer Laboratories, Libraries, and Websites in Jordanian Universities and Colleges

This article evaluates the accessibility computer laboratories, libraries, and web sites of five different institutions of higher education in Jordan. The evaluation is performed using a questionnaire and by expert visiting these institutions of higher education to check their accessibility according to a set of universal standard collected from the literature. The analysis of the results revealed a serious weakness in understanding, adopting and implementing web accessibility guidelines throughout nearly all evaluated Jordanian universities and colleges. On the other hand, the accessibility of computer laboratories and libraries the questionnaire answers show that there is environmental barrier and technological barrier for persons with disabilities to access such services. The article points out the importance of improving awareness, training staff and developers, and developing formal guidelines to improve the accessibility of universities and colleges services.