| DAPPOR, a Drill and Practice Program for Online Retrieval was evaluated at the University of Missouri-Columbia and Louisiana State University. Twenty-two students learning SDC and DIALOG, 13 students learning BRS and 8 students learning ELHILL served as the population for the evaluation. The analysis of the post-test and difference scores by means of a two-by-two factorial with repeated measures revealed that when students learned both SDC and DIALOG, in that order, there was a significant difference in the scores of those who used DAPPOR on the second system, DIALOG. The nature of this difference has not been established. No difference was revealed for those who used DAPPOR for learning ELHILL. Those learning BRS worked in pairs and an analysis of variance showed no significant difference in their scores. Multiple regressions on demographic data showed that 1 variable, undergraduate grade-point-average was significant, and that for only 1 system, DIALOG. Interviews with the students indicated that they found DAPPOR a useful supplement to formal instruction in online searching. Further, working with DAPPOR may make the students prefer 1 system over another for which they had not used DAPPOR. Most students who were given access to DAPPOR chose to use it. And the cost of using DAPPOR on the large mainframes of the 2 universities was considerably cheaper than the educational accounts usually available to educators. |
