The answer appears to be no, which surprised me. The authors, from Southern Illinois University, do caution that it’s a pretty small sample and not to draw many conclusions, but the evidence of their transcript logs seems to indicate that providing a co-browsing option along with chat reference doesn’t really add much instruction to the transaction, compared to a similar number of sessions where co-browse wasn’t an option. In exploring options for providing IM reference here at the U of C (finally!) I happened to be chatting earlier today with a librarian at an institution that offers both IM and commercial chat with co-browse, and was told that IM pretty much gets the job done and that they rarely feel the need to co-browse, so there’s some anecdotal evidence to go along with the article.
Title: Instruction via chat reference: does co-browse help?
Author(s): Stephanie J. Graves, Christina M. Desai
Journal: Reference Services Review
ISSN: 0090-7324
Year: 2006 Volume: 34 Issue: 3 Page: 340 – 357
DOI: 10.1108/00907320610685300
Technorati Tags: IM, chat, reference, co-browsing
Comments
2 Responses to “Instruction via chat reference: does co-browse help?”
Instruction via chat reference: does co-browse help?
So this is probably an old article but I really find this helpful. Im working with a cobrowsing software developer and this just presents a challenge to us to actually make cobrowsing useful. But we do believe that if IM can do the job done then great. But if someone requries more help than usual, then cobrowsing can actually be useful.