ANLY482 AY2016-17 T2 Group7: Project Findings
Analysis 1: Insights on Search Count by Date:
Chart 1: Overall Search Counts by Month
Chart 2: User Group Search Counts
Chart 3: Search Count of 'Others'
| Subject Matter: | Awareness of the number of searches throughout the year |
| Thought Process: | We want to understand the number of searches throughout the year and see if there are any observable trends. From our personal anecdotes as Seniors in SMU, we believe there will be a spike in searches especially during the project weeks (Week 4 onwards). Thus, we initiated the break down of the number of searches by months, to have a better look at where the peak periods are. |
| Analysis: | There is great variation in the number of searches across the span of a year, and these searches on the Ezproxy are contributed by students - Undergraduate, Masters, PhD and others (international exchange, local exchange, visiting students). As the users of the Ezproxy site are students of Singapore Management University, the spike in the number of searches can be seen during the months of the regular semesters (Term 1 and 2) - January to March and Mid-August to November.
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Chart 4: Search Count by Days for Semester 1: Jan-March 2016
Chart 5: Search Count by Days for Semester 2: Aug-Nov 2016
| Subject Matter: | Understanding the students’ behaviours in searches during the semesters. |
| Thought Process: | In SMU, 1 of the common perception is that SMU students study all day everyday, even the weekends. Thus, we want to see if this perception of SMU students is indeed true.
Next, we want to see if there is a surge in searches when the semester reaches the week where group projects are released. This is because projects in SMU largely requires the students to perform desk research and 1 of the many places to do so is through the SMU library’s EzProxy e-resources database. |
| Analysis: | Dip in Weekend Searches
From the charts in Semesters 1 & 2, we noticed that there is a dip in the number of searches performed every weekend (Saturdays & Sundays). For example, there is a plunge in the number of searches on 16th of January (Saturday). Thus, this may show that the perception of SMU students studying all day everyday and even the weekends may be untrue. Or it could be that SMU students generally do not perform as many searches for their research on weekends. Release of Project Requirements in Week 4 Generally, the release of the project requirements would be on Week 4 of Term 2, which is 25 Jan - 31 Jan. From Chart 4, we can observe that there is a steep increase in the number of searches from 25 Jan which peaks at 26 Jan and then decreases steeply again to the end of Week 4, 31 Jan. Contrastingly, for Term 1, the release of the project requirements would be on Week 4, which is 5 Sep - 11 Sep. From Chart 5, we can observe there is no major increase in the number of searches from 5 Sep - 11 Sep. Thus this not may explain that our belief that students did their searches in the week the project requirements are released. Research on Recess Week? However, upon further contrasting of the trends in Charts 4 and 5 side-by-side, we discovered that there is always a spike in the number of searches on the first day of Recess week in both Terms. For Term 2, Recess week starts on 22 Feb where there is a visible spike from 21 Feb to 22 Feb. And for Term 1, Recess week starts on 3 Oct where there is also a visible spike from 2 Oct to 3 Oct (this spike happens to be the highest in the entire Term 1). And in both cases, the number of searches decreases gradually until the end of the Recess Week (28 Feb for Term 2 and 9 Oct for Term 1 respectively). This is a very interesting discovery as it potentially shows that students typically start their research on the first day of Recess week, thereby contributing to the spike in number of searches, and then as the Recess week comes to a close, the amount of research students performed becomes lesser too. Highest Spike in Term 2: 11 Feb, end of CNY? From Chart 4, we observed the highest spike in Term 2, which takes place on 11 Feb 2016. We could not find a possible explanation for this other than it being the end of the Chinese New Year holidays (9 & 10 Feb 2016) and students may be guilty from enjoying their CNY a tad too much and thus began to do their research on the library databases on 11 Feb. Identifying the start and end of regular terms just by looking at the number of searches In both Charts 4 & 5, we could potentially identify the start and end of the 2 regular terms just by observing where the number of searches experience a gradual dip. The overall trend of the number of searches forms the shape of a jagged mountain for both terms, thus the start and ends of the mountains fall around the start and ends of the terms.
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Chart 6: Percentage of Search Counts by Degrees in Weekends for Semester 2: Jan-March 2016
Chart 7: Percentage of Search Counts by Degrees in Weekends for Semester 1: Sep to Nov 2016
| Subject Matter: | Understanding the percentage of searches contributed by students across their Degrees during weekends |
| Thought Process: | We want to dive deeper into the analysis of weekend searches and find out who are the ones still contributing to it, despite the dip in number of weekend searches. |
| Analysis: | In Chart 6, we noticed that 56.75% of searches were done by students enrolled in the Bachelor of Laws programme, which occupies a majority of the total number of searches performed on weekends. Additionally, 16.91% of searches were done by students from Bachelor of Business Management and 7.36% from the Juris Doctor programme.
One of the possible conclusions from this observation is that students enrolled in the Law field (Bachelor of Laws & Juris Doctor programme) do not typically stop performing searches and/or stop researching simply because it is the weekends. In addition to that, students in the Bachelor of Business Management programme contributes significantly to the number of searches on weekends too, perhaps due to the nature of the programme which is research-intensive. This is in contrast to students from other non-research intensive programmes such as Bachelor of Science (Information Systems) at 1.64% of total number of searches. In Chart 7, we can observe that the abovementioned trend is consistent for students in the Bachelor of Laws, Bachelor of Business Management and Juris Doctor. Thus, our trend analysis holds consistent for both Semesters 1 and 2.
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Chart 8: Search Count by Schools for 2016
Chart 9: Percentage of Search Counts by Schools & Months
| Subject Matter: | Understanding the percentage of searches contributed by students across their Degrees for 2016 |
| Thought Process: | After learning about the different spikes as a whole, we then consider the possibility of some schools being greater contributors to the searches. The main contributors to these searches should most likely be similar to that of the weekends, and thus, we broke down the search count by schools over the months to analyze the general trend of searches across each degree. |
| Analysis: | Similar to the weekend searches, we observed that the top 3 percentages of searches still come from the students enrolled in the Bachelor of Laws, Bachelor of Business Management and Juris Doctor.
In Chart 8, we observed that even though Semester 1 and Semester 2 starts in Aug and Jan respectively, the total number of searches in Jan is significantly higher than that of Aug. This is where additional information such as the exact dates of the start of Semesters 1 & 2 comes in handy; Semester 2 starts on 4 Jan 2016, thereby occupying the entire month of Jan whereby Semester 1 starts only on 15 Aug 2016, thereby occupying only half of the month of Aug. Without such additional information, analysts may conclude that perhaps students in Semester 2 are more hardworking than in Semester 1 in terms of the number of searches they perform.
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Chart 10: Usage of Database by Schools
With reference to Chart 10, we have selected 2 databases, Lawnet and Euromonitor, to focus on for this interim phase. This is due to the fact that these 2 databases are the most commonly used amongst the Law and Business students respectively, as these 2 schools are the 2 biggest contributors to the searches during the semester.
From the following actions applied to these 2 databases, we could then repeat these steps for the rest of the databases in the next phase following the interim report.
