Peer to Peer:Involving a student researcher to uncover

students’ real information seeking behaviours

Iain Baird, Academic Librarian

Ethan Lumb, Projects Assistant

Fran Porritt, Academic Librarian

Teesside University• Main Campus in Middlesbrough and site at Darlington • Post 92 University• Five Schools: 20,104 students• Queen’s Anniversary Prize 2013• Times Higher Education University of the Year 2009/2010• Vision: Providing Opportunities, Driving Enterprise, Delivering

Excellence • Goal: To educate our students in their chosen discipline to

become confident, critical, creative, adaptable, articulate and aspiring.

Student as Researcher Project

ANCIL

Secker, J. and Coonan, E. (2011). A new curriculum for information literacy. Available at: https://newcurriculum.wordpress.com/ (Accessed: 10 November 2014).

1. Transition to H.E.“The last time I wrote proper academic text was year 9.

So I did find it really hard, and I’m still struggling. I have had a little bit of help off my tutors…but I haven’t really sought any help from anyone, cos it’s just when you’re trying to juggle so much, trying to sit down and arrange an appointment to see someone is just not do-able.” (Participant 10)

2. Becoming an independent learner

“And they think that university should be autonomous, people should work on their own. Not so much like school children being told by their teacher what to do. And it is hard when you don’t know what they expect, so you don’t know if you are doing the right thing or not. And I have emailed a few times and said look can you just tell me what you want me to put in this assignment so that I can do it properly.” (Participant 10)

3. Developing academic literacies

“I knew I was capable of doing the art side of things basically, but when it came to the module that required a lot of structure and a lot more writing than any of the others actually produce reports and stuff like that because I knew it was outside my skills set it ended up just like being a case of I really don’t want to start this because when I do it is going to be terrible it is going to actually be challenging.” (Participant 3)

4. Mapping & evaluating the information landscape

“Then I read the …. abstract, then I go and read the last couple of paragraphs of the conclusion and if I’m still interested, with some names that I’ve not heard or not come across before, I’ll type them into Google, research them to see whether, what they’ve done, to see if this is the only publication they’ve done on this topic, then is it as reliable as somebody who’s spent 30 years researching” (Participant 1)

5. Resource Discovery in your Discipline

“I just had a little mooch…because when we came to do the workshops in the library about finding journals in different ways, I already had an idea of where things were, so it was a lot easier.” (Participant 1)

“That’s what I’ve always liked about graphic design, because the teachers aren’t really teachers; they’re just designers that tutor you” (Participant 9)

6. Managing information

“It took me to half way through the third year to realise there was such a thing as RefWorks as no one told me about that before which I was a bit gutted about. Hours spent referencing work when actually it could have all been done for you.” (Participant 2)“I've learned how to take effective notes and how to structure it properly and how to accurately proofread my work by reading it out to myself and that helps.” (Participant 8)

6. Managing information

7. Ethical dimension of information

“I mean I can honestly say I have never even contemplated plagiarising, I will reference an “and” just to be on the safe side! … There was an incident …a certain person forged all their results for their dissertation and made up participants...it angers me that people think they can get away with that, when other people have tried so hard to produce an honest piece of work.” (Participant 2)

8. Presenting & communicating knowledge

“I tend to only struggle when I have to write in different tenses. Which sounds really simple but like we had to write lab reports up, and you can’t say ‘I did this, I did that’, you have got to say ‘it was done’ but if you say it was done in a certain way then it doesn’t count as writing it in the correct tense. So it’s really difficult to get it written down in the correct way.”(Participant 7)

9. Synthesis and creating new knowledge

“You go back and forth through idea, processing and research. ..So as long as I’d keep the research going, then I’d do some designs then if I got stuck with designs I’d sort of go back to research and look at other people’s work and just get a feel of the standard.” (Participant 9)

10. Social dimension of information

“…because the whole thing about being in the game industry is working in groups to make sure everyone’s working together because if you can’t do that you’re not going to get a job in the game industry so even though this one assignment was really tough on my group skills, I will try and progress it because otherwise I won’t get anywhere within the industry … so everything from that group will be a thing of what not to do. Help me get through life.” (Participant 4)

Impact and Implications

• Learning Hub and Succeed@Tees Workshops• PASS and value of peer support• Digital Literacy• Focus on academic staff?• Audit of information literacy provision using

ANCIL: identifying gaps • Follow up interviews with participants

Questions/Discussion

Iain Baird (i.baird@tees.ac.uk) Fran Porritt (f.porritt@tees.ac.uk)