Search of learning objects from a repositories federation: an experimental assessment

Abstract

We present in this paper the assessment of the searching performance over a federation of learning objects repositories, in particular the Federação de Repositórios Educa Brasil – FEB, with regard to the response speed and quantity of retrieved records. The aim is to determine the benefits of this structure in the centralized searches over distributed resources, thinking in a near future to build a similar implementation for Colombia. Such an evaluation was done throughout an experiment with 10 search terms in the health field and a comparison was made between FEB and two well-known repositories: MERLOT and The Gateway. In order to avoid biases regarding the searching times and locations, such searches were done 30 times from 3 different locations each: Brazil, Colombia and Spain. The results obtained showed a lower mean response time which was statistically significant compared to MERLOT (P value < 0,001), but a larger time compared to The Gateway (P value < 0,001). Finally, a continuous grow was evident in the amount of learning objects registered in FEB during the last two years.