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When to Call

a Librarian

Faculty Research Assignment Design and Implications for Faculty/Librarian Collaboration

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Who We Are

Outreach and Reference Librarian

The University of the District of Columbia

she/her

Meghan Kowalski

Faith Rusk

Cathy Meals

Assessment and Reference Librarian

The University of the District of Columbia

she/her

Lower Division Research Assistance & Instruction Coordinator

San Francisco State University

she/her

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What We’re Covering

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03

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Our Study

When to Call

a Librarian

Faculty Understanding

of Research

Ongoing Collaboration

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Yikes!

How this work got started

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Project Goals

How do faculty develop their research assignments?

#1

How can librarians support instruction beyond “teaching the databases”?

#3

How do faculty identify and prioritize which skills to teach?

#2

FAITH

Our goals for this project were to interview faculty and learn from them how they develop their research assignments

How do they make decisions on what they want the assignment to be (a paper, a podcast, etc.)

And the specific assignment parameters - how many sources, and what type, what make up the final product?

We also wanted to hear from them how they identify which skills they want/need to teach in their classes, and how they approach this instruction.

Lastly, with this greater understanding of how they worked, we also hoped to discover how librarians could offer more and better support to students in their development as information literate citizens, and faculty in their research pedagogy.

We’d love to do more than the most common request of teaching students how to use the databases!

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General Findings

How they teach and why

Approaches

What they want students to learn

Learning Goals

What issues they encounter

Challenges

FAITH

Approaches

Faculty view research in the context of their discipline, in this case, in relationship to rhetoric and writing.
They also assume primary responsibility for teaching information literacy and research skills, a finding that echoes previous research findings.
The faculty we interviewed acknowledged librarian expertise, but largely viewed librarian roles as teaching database searching, or providing a general library orientation
Faculty used scaffolding to make the complex research process more accessible to students.
Faculty were iterative and reflective in their approach to teaching.

Most didn’t receive any training in how to teach research, and so they made adjustments across semesters, and within semesters in response to student needs

Challenges

Large variations in the existing research knowledge of students

Can’t expect students will be able to do a particular thing, and it’s an ongoing challenge determining what support students need.

Siloing means they don’t always know what’s going on in other classes

Which also leads to an obligation to do it all - cause they don’t know if they’ll get it anywhere else.

Amount of course context required to teach research and writing is a lot.

Learning Goals

There were 7 learning goals that all of the faculty we interviewed articulated, which we will discuss in more detail later.

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Faculty Understanding

of Research

Definitions and Outcomes

CATHY

· All understood that the purpose of writing composition was research as well as writing

· Because it was an course SLO, but also because research is intertwined with rhetoric and writing

· Assumed primary responsibility – this is common in literature. Knew of librarian expertise but didn’t draw on us for much more than orientation/database/one-shot

· Course structure varied since no standard syllabus, but all did a ton of scaffolding – good pedagogical approach but also utility in this class because research is complicated and scaffolding can make it more understandable

· Ultimately, working toward traditional academic papers, but also often presentations (sharing research as part of the process) and multimedia

· Iterative and reflective approach – learn to teach research by teaching research, ready to adjust both in the semester and between semesters

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Learning Outcomes

What faculty want student to learn in their class…
	Become aware of and use different kinds of information sources
	Understand the role / use of those sources
	Know how to evaluate sources (and in a given context)
	Integrate and synthesize sources
	Properly attribute and cite sources
	Develop personal opinion / voice
	Understand how research applies outside of the classroom

CATHY

· Top learning outcomes

· Gain exposure to info landscape – SLO but also their own goals. Often at least one type of source. Explicitly taught students how to look for info – themselves, using our materials, or library instruction

· How info can be used in different contexts and how suitability varies by need/audience/context. Annotated bib for sure, explain how the source will contribute

· Evaluate quality/suitability for context – “credible” or “valid” – discussions on authority, guidelines for evaluating sources, sharing tools. Especially important on the internet (though lots of benefits of internet too!) and outside of academia

· Integrate/synthesize source – practice paraphrasing and summarizing, in-class exercises, low-stakes. Intersection of varying voices contributing to big picture

· Attribute and cite – mostly reflects SLO. Some mechanics focused but also just understand why. Lots of samples, producing samples

· Personal opinion voice – critical thinkers, authors – especially students with marginalized identities. Choose own topics, especially personal/community related – better work too

· Academic and real-life – understand what research is, understand how it works within and outside academia

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Pedagogical Approaches

Explicit Instruction

Practice /

Learn by Doing

Low Stakes Writing

Scaffolding

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A Special Note…

The Annotated Bibliography does A LOT

Scaffolded Step
Low Stakes Writing
Practice
Intro to Research
Critical Thinking
Integrating & Synthesizing
Citation

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Challenges

Too Much, Too Few

Messy Processes

Teaching Silos

Student Backgrounds

MEGHAN

Our faculty mentioned several challenges in our interviews that we’ve also encountered anecdotally and through the literature

First, faculty expressed that, especially in these entry-level writing courses, they have too much too teach in too few weeks. It’s impossible to teach the entirety of writing, rhetoric, and research in an average 16-week semester
Faculty also felt siloed. Since they did not know what students were arriving with or what they would get later, they felt the need to teach it all. One faculty went so far as to say, essentially, “If they don’t get it here, I’m not sure they’ll get it at all”
Another challenge is that research and writing are messy. The fact that these processes are necessarily entwined make things even messier. You have to teach them together and none of these processes are linear or straightforward. Faculty struggled to make these complex things understandable.
Finally, students came to the classes with a vast array of previous experience and knowledge. Some had a good handle on these processes while others were completely new. Faculty had to try to teach all levels while not knowing what the class makeup would look like until the course started. Faculty mentioned having to pivot on the fly as they learned what each of their students needed.

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— One of Our Favorite Professors

“I think, to some degree, these later writing courses are kind of - they’re built on unstable land.”

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When to

Call a Librarian

Or email or text… we don’t care

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The Current Environment

Our study found the following implications:

Faculty are overworked
Librarians only “teach the databases”
Librarian expertise is underutilized

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What Librarians CAN Provide

It’s still better than nothing

One-Shot

Live and Online,

Synchronous and Asynchronous

Methods

Essential and transferable skills

Foundational

FAITH

So, how can we support?

We can do the standard format for a library session - what we call a one-shot.

It’s limited in what it can accomplish, but it can be productive.
However, it doesn’t have to just be limited to database demos.

Librarians can help provide foundational support for information literacy, We can help shore up that “unstable land.” We’ve taught classes on every step of the research process - from taking a big topic idea and working it into a research question, to searching for sources, evaluating those sources, and how to effective use what you find - whether it’s citing them or synthesising them.
Librarian expertise in developing these foundational and transferable skills goes beyond just searching the databases.

We do this work through a variety of methods.

For one-shots, we can match the mode: we are happy to work with folks synchronously or asynchronous, in-person or online. Whatever you need.
Beyond the one-shot, we also have a wealth of materials (that we’ve created or that other librarians have) - videos, activities, learning management software modules, etc.
Consider also if a flipped classroom might be good approach for your one-shot.

Working with your librarian you may be able to identify some reading materials or digital learning objects that students can engage with before class, so that the one-shot can be have more active learning - giving students more space to practice and apply their information literacy skills but support readily available.

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Sustainable Collaboration

Embedded Librarian

Train-the-

Trainer

Consultations

Program Change

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Faculty/Librarian

roles are aligned

End goal is improved student outcomes

Librarians can make things easier for faulty

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Q & A

Meghan Kowalski - meghan.kowalski@udc.edu

Catherine Meals - catherine.meals@udc.edu

Faith Rusk - frusk@sfsu.edu

THANK YOU!

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