The Possession Degree of Skills for Using Search Engines and Digital Information Sources by Postgraduate Students of the Faculty of Education-Sana’a University- from the Students’ Point of View

Abstract

The present study aimed to determine the possession degree of the postgraduate students at the Faculty of Education- Sana’a University for the skills of using search engines and digital information sources to get the information from electronic resources from the point of view of the students themselves. To achieve the objectives of the study and to answer its questions, the researcher developed a questionnaire composed of six main axes and included a study sample of 288 master and doctoral students from ten scientific specialties.  The data of the study were expressed as means and standard deviations and analyzed by t-test and one-way ANOVA. The results of the study revealed the presence of weakness in the possession degree of skills to use the search engines and digital information sources by the students, particularly the possession of the skills for using advanced search, logical operators, using electronic databases and citing the extracted references. The results also showed significant differences in the possession degree of skills for using search engines and digital information sources attributed to the gender variable in favor of female students. In addition, statistically significant differences were found in the possession degree of skills for using search engines and digital information sources attributed to the variable of scientific specialty in favor of the students of educational technology and the students of science curricula and methods of teaching compared to their peers from other scientific specialties. However, there were no statistically significant differences attributed to the variable of the study level(master/ doctorate).