Chapter 18 Information Experience in the Context of Information Seeking Methods by Prospective Students

This chapter presents insights about prospective students’ information experience when using social media to support their decision-making concerning which university to attend. When choosing a university, prospective students experience different ways of using information, engaging with a variety of sources, which have changed rapidly from traditional print and mass media, exhibitions and road shows, to the Internet and university websites. Increasingly, prospective students use information via diverse social media platforms where they can engage, participate and collaborate as information users on the social web. As a result, their information experience is expanding beyond information seeking to engagement with social media and participation in a dynamic online community. Drawing on a literature review and my own research, I demonstrate that prospective students’ information experience involves collaboration , engagement and communities via social media. I present findings that contrast prospective students’ dynamic and wider multidimensional information experience of the social web, with static and unidimensional information seeking of traditional sources. In particular, I demonstrate that prospective students can now ‘experience’ the university and seek peer advice by collaborating in online communities. In this way, they gain tangible as well as intangible university information.