Understanding 21st Century Learners

The aim of the study was to evaluate the importance and effectiveness of services and resources which the library provides and find out if the users are satisfied with them. The study focused mainly on the following problem areas; type of services required by the users, adequacy of information resources and user satisfaction of the services they receive. Three hundred (300) questionnaires were distributed only to students. 284 out of 300 questionnaires issued were received back yielding an 85% response rate. Microsoft Excel was used to analyze data collected. It was discovered that the users do make significant use of the library, its services and resources. A total of 284 respondents were surveyed. The respondents are mostly 20 year-olds which is 28.9% of the overall respondents. It is followed by 19 year-olds with 26.1% and 18 year-olds w 24.3% of the overall respondents. The least age of the respondents who answered are 23 year olds with only 7% of the overall respondents. The respondents are mostly female with 64.8% compared to male respondents with 35.2% of the respondents. Most of the respondents came from College of Education Arts and Sciences (CEAS) with 115 respondents and is equivalent to 40.5%. The department with the least number of respondents is CON with only 14 respondents equivalent to 4.9%. 115 of the respondents or 40.5% are 4th year students while the lowest number of respondents in a given year level is 7 and is equivalent to 2.5%. Services delivery needs, circulation and reserve was rated very satisfied with a mean of 4.34. This was followed by opening hours with a mean of 4.25 which was interpreted as very satisfied. Archives got the lowest mean of 4.07 and interpreted as satisfied by the respondents. The overall mean of services delivery needs is 4.14 and is interpreted as satisfied. The overall mean of the respondents’ satisfaction of the library services has a mean of 4.20 and interpreted as very satisfied. All areas in the College Learning resource center are rated as extremely important. The overall mean is 4.55. Physical facilities needs have the highest mean of 4.71 followed by Administration with 4.63. Collection needs has the lowest mean of 4.46 but is still extremely important.

Since Bandura’s seminal paper on self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977), self-efficacy has become one of the most studied topics in psychology. The relationships between self-efficacy and academic achievement have been studied extensively in the domains of English Language Arts (e.g., Pajares, 1996).  Studies of this relationship in the context of learning English as a second/foreign language are emerging (e.g., Li & Wang, 2010; Prat-Sala, & Redford, 2012; Wang, Kim, Bang, & Ahn, 2013).
Research Questions
1. What is the average effect size of the relationship between self-efficacy beliefs and English language proficiency?
2. Does the effect size vary by the population, data analytical procedure, and the learning context?
This study is a meta-analysis of 381 effect sizes reported in 73 publications, of which 58 (80%) were journal articles and 15 (20%) were dissertations/theses. Descriptive statistics were used to report the means and standard deviations of the effect sizes by country, English as a second/foreign language context, grade-level, statistically method, and publication type. A multilevel data analytic procedure was employed to examine the variance between and within publications (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002). 
Findings Intra-class correlation coefficients indicated that 53% of the variance in effect sizes reported was between publications. Results from the conditional model suggested that statistical method was a significant predictor for the estimated effect sizes of English general language proficiency, t (333) = 6.40, p < .001. The effect sizes reported by Pearson’s correlation coefficient was 0.20 higher than that reported by regression or structural equation models. The variables included in the conditional model reduced the variance of the effect sizes by 18.80%.
Researchers should be cautious when reporting effect sizes in previous studies because the effect size could vary due to the statistical model used. The effect sizes reported by Pearson correlation coefficients failed to consider the contribution of other factors and therefore inflated the effect size whereas those reported by linear regression or structural equation models have multiple covariates controlled. The study contributes to the literature in that the results urge researchers take other constructs into consideration when examining relationships between self-efficacy and academic achievement.