Investigating students' web browsing performance based on their experience and mental model completeness level

Abstract

Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the role of mental models of undergraduate students at Shiraz University in the process of browsing the shopping websites according to their experience. Methodology: This was an applied research conducted through a quantitative approach. The sample consisted of 90 volunteer students of Shiraz University. The data gathering tool were a researcher-made questionnaire to determine the level of experience and level of completeness of the user's mental model as well as the transaction log files to extract their browsing performance (success rate and time). Results: Results showed that there was significant differences between the users with different mental model completeness levels in terms of their success rates in browsing, i.e., users with a complete mental model were the most successful ones, while those with an incomplete mental model were the least successful ones. On the other hand, there was significant difference between the experienced and inexperienced groups of students in terms of performance, i.e., experienced users spent relatively less time to achieve greater success in browsing. The findings suggested that experience and mental models completeness had impact on success rates in browsing, but there was only a significant difference among experienced users group and novice users group in time duration on browsing. Conclusions: Despite the importance of recognizing the users' mental models completeness of browsing features, this issue has been neglected.

Keywords

• mental models
• mental model completeness level
• experience
• browsing
• internet shopping websites