Student perceptions of information and academic literacy

My institution has set up a group to bring together colleagues who support students' study skills. The members come mostly from the four faculties of the University (including student support workers - with their varying titles - and senior staff with responsibilities for enhancing the student experience) as well as representatives from Library Services.

The group has run two events, the most recent called 'Literacy Matters: where are we now in supporting students’ academic literacy skills?' One of the aims of the group is to share best practice with each other and therefore the event included several short sessions on existing services and projects, such as the new Android referencing app which creates a reference from the data provided (including being able to start the process by scanning a book's barcode)*. Groupwork questions encouraged delegates to consider which resources or services could be or should be centrally located or delivered and which required a more local or tailored (e.g. faculty or department-specific) approach.

The session also included hearing from current students. A series of filmed interviews were conducted before the event and edited into a 5 minute film (by a willing Journalism student) to be shown at the event. A panel of three students also attended in person and elaborated on some of the themes which were discussed on film.

I was the interviewer for the filmed sessions and found them both fascinating and sometimes depressing. I work in an art, media and design library and wanted the views of these students to be represented at the event, so several of the students I interviewed were studying practice courses such as Fine Art. The views they expressed confirmed many of the assumptions I had (based on experience, of course!) about some students on creative courses, such as preferring face to face support over online support, experiencing learning difficulties such as dyslexia which made essay writing challenging for them, as well as the ways in which they use the library and other services. At the event, we had two international students and a home student who were studying subjects including business and law at the largest campus.

I imagine my reflections won't surprise many librarians (unless you work in the most amazingly perfect institution!) but here's what I took away from these discussions:

Many of our services are completely invisible to students

My institution provides study support across all faculties, but not all students know about it. The Library also provides face to face as well as online support in using its resources and getting the best out of them, but again not all students access this support. Why is this?

This is one area that I'd like to pursue at my campus as I think this could be helped by promoting the services (e.g. academic support advisers) at the right time. Several of the students suggested study support staff could come into a lecture to highlight what is available, but they did acknowledge that the timing would have to be right. Too early and it becomes part of all the other information which they're bombarded with, too late and students don't know about it early enough. Could these study support services be highlighted along with library sessions? The line between information and academic literacy skills is not always easily understood by students.

Students can be reticent about asking for help

The students we interviewed often expressed reluctance to ask for help and only asked for it when things had got bad (e.g. feedback on written work). Several of the students had discovered the study support at the campus through word of mouth, mostly from friends and occasionally from lecturers.

There is a preconception that support services are there for when you perceive yourself to be failing vs getting support to improve, whatever level you are

This came through again and again in the interviews: the students we spoke to mostly hadn't sought help to improve their academic skills until they found they were struggling. Can we improve how the support we provide is described? Can we demystify it for students? Also, could we cope if demand suddenly increased due to successful marketing?  

Are international students more focused on getting all the support they can?

This was certainly the message we got from the two international students at the event, as well as a separately filmed interview (not shown at the event for technical reasons). The pressure from their families to succeed, as well as their high expectations for themselves, seemed to motivate these students to access all the support available to them. They were also positive about the support available, having no complaints about the services they accessed.

A one stop shop for student services

Denise Turner, Assistant Director, Learning and Research Support at Teeside University, talked at the event about Teeside's Learning Hub which offers guidance on a variety of academic skills as well as referring students on to relevant services across the University. This frontline one stop shop idea came up as a recommendation from one student in the interviews too - interestingly, she linked it in with not wanting to bother her tutor for one small question, when she felt she might be able to get help in a different way - and there was agreement at the event that this would be ideal, although problematic across a multi-site institution.

I'm aware that other institutions are further down the line with centralised student services - how are they working? How can they work across multi-site universities and how does this fit in with student study support across your institutions?

* Interestingly, the group gave a spontaneous round of applause when shown this demo but one academic commented that it's yet another example of students being spoonfed...

Ringing the changes: transforming teams and technologies

Image courtesy of seneca77

The libraries of the universities of Bath, Bristol, Bath Spa and UWE collaborate on a regular basis and are together known as AULIC. The name refers to Avon Libraries in Cooperation, which I think is both laudable and also, I have discovered, very valuable. Each year there is a summer conference which is held at one of the institutions. This year's title was Ringing the changes: transforming teams and technologies and focused on how academic libraries can not just cope with change, but enable their services to continually be flexible and proactive, whilst supporting staff through change.

Organisational practices and change management: an overview by Howard Nicholson (then University Librarian, University of Bath)

The day began with Howard Richardson's exploration of how managers and libraries can make themselves as receptive to change as possible. He integrated organisational theory into his talk, illustrating how organisational structures can help or hinder this aim. Hierarchival structures are the least adaptive to change, according to Richardson, as silos can easily develop and individual tasks within teams can feel divorced from the purpose and direction of the organisation.

I found this interesting, especially as my library service has been engaging in focus groups to analyse and develop a new fit for purpose staffing structure. One section of the focus group activity asked staff to look at a variety of staffing structures and consider their advantages and disadvantages.

Questions to ponder:

• how can we maintain a culture where staff are receptive to change?
• how can managers build trust so that they can more easily introduce change?

Richardson stressed the importance of face to face communication in order to build strong relationships, supported by other methods - such as anonymous feedback and staff surveys. He also talked about the benefits of staff development, including job exchanges and shadowing within the same institution or beyond. This fosters empathy and understanding of others' roles and the institution's mission. The University of Bath organises summer visits to other libraries or places of interest, which combine a social element as well as team building.

Key reflections for me:

• to continue to contribute to the staff development agenda at my institution, as well as making connections with colleagues in my profession via social media and events.
• develop my role as a manager: revisit parts of the management course I completed, which looked at producing a development plan for the people I line manage. This will be especially useful as I will be moving campus imminently and will line manage new people.
• Consider what coaching and mentoring relationships could do to assist with the changes in staffing at my institution, as well as my own development

All change please: preparing staff and users for a new model of library at The Hive, Worcester by Dr Judith Keene (Assistant Director of Information and Learning Services, University of Worcester)

The next talk definitely provided a few talking points over coffee. Dr Judith Keene described the process of planning for The Hive and stressed the importance and value of integrating the staff and resources of the University of Worcester and Council services including the public library and the Archive and Archaeology Service. Keene positively talked about her excitement about the project as well as some of the challenges (such as the steep learning curve some staff had when learning about how to support all potential users of the building). I really like the idea of a service with no intimidating service desk, but with roving staff on hand. Some libraries in my institution are further down this path than others and I think we have opportunities to develop this idea further. I was left with a strong interest to see how The Hive develops and copes with demand from a diverse set of users.

23dian by bitzi

‘23 Things’ at the University of Warwick Emma Cragg (Academic Support Librarian, University of Warwick)

Emma Cragg talked about 23 Things and how the scheme started and has been developed. She highlighted the advantages for both individuals and the service in the areas of teambuilding and skills development in particular.

I started the online 23 Things a while ago (see my posts about various Things, if you're interested) but hearing about how it worked across a library service was interesting to me. I hadn't linked up the fact that as part of my institution's Staff Development Hour, a version of the course had been offered to staff (I'm easily confused when different terminology is used!!) and I intend to find out how the course was supported and received by colleagues who took it. At Warwick, different staff took on responsibility for the weeks, writing a background blog post about the Thing and supporting staff as they learned.

Emma and her colleagues have applied the idea to early career researchers, using a wiki to share the information.

This talk spurred me on to getting back to 23 Things and attempting to complete the course and considering whether I can help my colleagues run the course again in future.

“It’s going to be mobile and social, stupid!” Peter Godwin (Academic Liaison Librarian, University of Bedfordshire)

Peter gave an entertaining talk about the joys and challenges of new technology. Impossible to summarise!

Digital media: supporting teaching and learning Zak Mensah (E-Learning Officer, JISC Digital Media)

Jump on the social media bandwagon by Matt Hamm

This talk by Zak was both refreshing and at times frustrating. It is always good to hear from people outside of the echo chamber, telling us straight what they appreciate or find annoying about our services, but it can also be difficult to hear - especially when it's something beyond the library's control. Zak works for the JISC Digital Media service, which offers advice, guidance and training to FE and HE institutions on using digital media.

Zak encouraged us to find out what our users find frustrating and work out at what point the problems occur. He illustrated this with an example of downloading a pdf to his Kindle (it appears with a long meaningless title) and the frustration over the inability to download library ebooks to his Kindle. This frustration is shared by many librarians! But how much are we all doing to lobby publishers and other key bodies to make this possible? I know this is taking place around the world (see Bobbi Newman's Librarian by Day ebooks posts) but this clearly isn't apparent to our users.


Social media at Bath Spa University Library Matt Durant (Information Manager (Digital Resources), Bath Spa University)

Matt gave a really entertaining talk about how what Bath Spa has done in the way of social media. One example was using Twitter to connect with students, such as responding to criticism of the library in a light hearted way. He also showed a range of tweets relating to the libraries of the four AULIC institutions (Bath, Bath Spa, Bristol and UWE) which were very funny.

So, this post had been sitting in my drafts for quite a while...a stark reminder that I really have to work hard to finish off tasks sometimes. However, it was actually useful to re-read this post and makes me think, I should maybe should set up a 'blast from the past' from everyday.me. This website and app sends you a reminder of what you blogged about a year ago, which could prompt me to review what goals I set or how I have built on what I learned. 

This was a timely reminder that some training events can feel very inspiring at the time but may not always be acted upon. I've not done too badly, though: keeping up with staff development at work and outside of it; doing my best to support others as our restructuring programme draws closer; keeping abreast of research in my faculty and setting up a blog for colleagues to share their reflections on staff development. But, I could do a lot more so maybe I should work out a way of reviewing my progress more actively. Oh, hang on, that'll be a performance and development review, won't it...

Collaboration

I've been thinking about the value of collaboration a lot recently and there have been quite a few triggers:

• Watching a documentary on Jeremy Deller where he talks about working with a range of people and groups such as a brass band, community groups and other artists and how this can result in thought-provoking and entertaining work.
  
• Visiting the Pervasive Media Studio which can be described as a hive of collaborative activity. Residents working on digital media projects spend time in an open office and are encouraged to work together, bounce ideas around and spark off each other and their environment. They run weekly talks open to anyone and invite people to linger afterwards and discuss their ideas with residents and others. The visit was organised for students on the Media Culture and Practice and Media and Cultural Studies courses to encourage them to bring ideas to the studio even if they don't have the expertise to realise them. The focus was on collaboration and being proactive to make use of other people's skills in order to make their ideas a reality.
  
• Being part of a committee organising a conference. I have realised that it is in an open discussion forum that my best and creative ideas come out. In our first committee meeting, I contributed quite a few ideas. Some were a bit farfetched and unattainable, some weren't wholly relevant to the conference and came out of over-excitement, but actually lots of them have made it to the provisional programme which is pretty exciting.
  
• Attending an evening lecture about artists' books which generated ideas for the conference mentioned above and ways in which my library could promote its collections.

There's nothing groundbreaking in what I've just written, but it has made me think, do we as librarians create enough space to have creative ideas about the things we do - teaching, working in partnership with our colleagues inside our own service and in the wider university, with people with similar interests?

And if we don't, why don't we? Or why can't we? Can that old chestnut of not having enough time be overcome? If so, will the results be worth it? I think they could be, especially in the realm of subject librarianship where speaking the language of your students can further embed information literacy in modules and courses. Understanding better the teaching and interests of the students I support and of the lecturers' research interests can only be a good thing and makes me think, how can I make my information literacy teaching even more relevant...

Applying collaborative working

I plan to run sessions for second year Journalism sessions next term implementing a problem-based learning approach. This might give me the opportunity to fuse information skills and subject-based scenarios to really connect with the students and get them to learn and apply search skills in the session and after it. I hope this will go a step further from demonstrating databases with subject-specific keywords and topics and get the students to engage more with resources in a supportive environment but to also in one which encourages their own independent learning.

The lecturer of the module is supportive and keen to apply this approach and work in partnership with me to design the session, so I am optimistic that the session could be successful in several ways (not least, building on my integration into the course curriculum).

How has collaborative working affected your work and professional relationships? I'd really like to know how I can develop this into a meaningful way of working.

Have you implemented problem-based learning into your teaching?

Library envy

Today I went to the University of Exeter for our final UC&R south west committee meeting. As part of the day, we got to have a tour of the new Forum. Those of us not lucky enough to work there were filled with library envy!

Ta-da! (or Thing 18)

I am still working on the Things from last year, so my thing 18 won't be the same thing 18 from this year's CPD 23 Things. This Thing is all about presenting information.

Prezi

I have tinkered with Prezi a few times but always chickened out by designing the presentation in Prezi and then exporting it to PowerPoint. The importance of feeling confident when you're in front of any group cannot be underestimated, and ultimately I always felt more comfortable with PowerPoint. Plus everything seems to be geared up to challenged you when you use anything except the standard software. For example, I had to make a case to have a thick client (i.e. a proper PC) instead of a thin (i.e. a dumb terminal which isn't great at dealing with anything other than text documents). Once I had this, I could experiment with all the websites I use at home on my laptop but I found out that designing a Prezi on Chrome does not mean it works the same on Internet Explorer (the browser on all the University PCs).

As I blogged about earlier in the year, I finally used Prezi in a lecture theatre. And it went well! It definitely helped having two of us presenting the session, so any little hitches could be sorted out without the entire presentation coming to a halt.

In the autumn, I will be working at the art and design campus full time and will have the responsibility of leading on the user education. This is exciting as I'll be trying to think a lot more creatively, for several reasons. Creative in the sense that the students will be more responsive to the visual element of sessions (maybe my colourful slides will go down well there...) but also in the sense of working out how to design sessions that meet our objectives while in rooms with no IT or seeing large numbers of students in one go.

Slideshare


Slideshare is a site where you can upload your presentations, enabling others to see them and make use of them (although you can restrict who can see them and what they do with them). I have been aware of the site for some time but only recently found a use for it. Being on the committee organising the DARTS3 conference, I suggested that we should upload our presenters' presentations to Slideshare. Aside from helping minimise all the paper handouts, it meant we could also share the presentations much more widely than just with those who attended the conference. See our Slideshare site if you're interested in the presentations given about librarians and research in higher education.

Searching Slideshare is another matter but it's a little like youtube, you can waste spend hours on it, getting inspiration for designing presentations, learning stuff, wanting to know what the author actually said when/if they delivered it... It also feeds into a bigger conversation, where people can view, respond, have a conversation about the presentation or its message. For instance, one presentation I looked at had an update at the end where it talked about the impact it had on people. Take a look at it if you have a spare couple of minutes.


Really Ugly Résumés

View more presentations from Jesse Desjardins - @jessedee

Looking back at the DARTS3 Slideshare account, I can see that one presentation had 133 views in only 9 days. OK not thousands, but pretty good for us! It was easy to tweet and blog about the site and really got the message out quickly and easily.

I don't think Slideshare is perfect but it does provide a space for sharing presentations and encouraging the visual element of communication.

Library Camp South West (#libcampsw)

On a very wet Saturday in Exeter, a group of librarians (plus one non-librarian) met for an unconference. For readers who are unfamiliar with this concept, an unconference is based upon open space technology, the philosophy of which can be encapsulated as: 'In Open Space meetings, events and organizations, participants create and manage their own agenda of parallel working sessions around a central theme of strategic importance' (1).   Basically, sessions are pitched on the day and attendees can choose to go along to whichever sessions they fancy, choosing to up and leave to sample another parallel session if they want. The south west event was a regional spin off from the UK national librarycamp and various international librarycamps.

I have to be honest and say when my alarm went off at an ungodly hour on my day off, I did question my sanity. But nevertheless I played the game of chance with the branch line to the main station (I won, but only just) and made it to Exeter. Let us take a moment to think about those who didn't make it. Those stuck in Honiton, for example, whose trains got stuck in the torrential weather conditions. Anyway, I met a few others on the train and we bravely trotted up the hill to the University campus.

I've had a busy few weeks: three conferences (one of which I helped to organise), registering as a mentor (or mental, as I have become affectionately - I hope - referred to by my mentee) and generally a bit of a tumultuous time at work, preparing to move campuses in September. Why not add another event to the mix? On my day off? And worse still, suggest a session topic for library camp south west? 

Table 1 of 2 of cakes

And so, with Claire, I found myself facilitating a discussion about why librarians should consider doing research, as well as supporting it. Supporting the researchers in my department was an objective on my annual review last year, not least because I felt I could do it better. I made contact with the Faculty research officer and had discussions with the two job-share librarians whose remit is to support research within my library service. But it wasn't really until I attended the ARLG national conference in Newcastle and the DARTS3 conference in Dartington last month, that I began to see the importance not just of supporting researchers, but possibly becoming one myself. 

Claire and I learned a lot from all the speakers at DARTS3 and especially Miggie Picton, who demystified research and made me realise that I was already doing things in my work which could be viewed as research with just a few little tweaks. All the benefits of doing research (to myself in terms of development and confidence, to my institution and to the profession at large) also became clear to me. Inspired by Miggie's interactive presentation, I suggested to Claire that maybe we could have more of a conversation about this at libcampsw. 

Claire pitched the idea to everyone and our idea was written on a post-it so people could decide which session to attend. A lovely group came to our session, ranging from people who did not consider themselves researchers to those who had experience of presenting at conferences and writing articles for peer-reviewed journals. We had a great conversation about what we meant by research, what research people had done and what they had found difficult as well as what they had got out of it. To finish, we asked everyone to think about one thing they were going to do when they got back to work.

One part of the conversation focused on how new researchers could access and learn from those who had more experience (e.g. maybe they had already published material). The potential value of a new researchers forum was mooted, a place where those new to research could pitch ideas, ask for help from those with more experience, discuss any problems they are having etc. I think this could be a really great resource and together with Claire and Rachel and anyone else interested, hope to investigate whether others think so too and set something up. Or maybe something already exists that we don't know about?

So, this was my first experience of facilitating a session like this (somehow staff and student training sessions don't seem to count) and it wasn't half as scary as I thought it might be!

Macaroons and fruit (no prizes for which I preferred)

The next session I attended was the Chartership one. I chartered quite a while ago (just checked, it was 2006, a lot later than I remembered) and don't have terribly fond memories of translating the criteria and writing it all up. It seems like similar anxieties are felt by Chartership candidates now, so as a new mentor I found it really interesting to sit in on the discussion they were having. Checking the meaning of criteria, tips on how to link evidence to the Body of Professional Knowledge, but most importantly, the value of networks to share information and support. I didn't have a mentor when I was going through the process and I certainly didn't have access to the online support networks that information professionals have, but I can see how valuable these are. 

A mixture of a supportive and understanding mentor but also one who can set deadlines and 'be scary' when necessary seemed to be required so I vow to try to get this balance right! I flippantly suggested that mentors could advertise how scary and deadline-setting they were: 1 chilli for kindly mentors, 5 chillis for scary ones! Actions for me are to refresh my memory on the Chartership process and guidelines (having undergone the CILIP mentoring training recently) and make contact with other mentors for advice and tips (mentors need networks too!). 

The third session I went to was led by Michael Davis who demonstrated Cranfield University's CRM (customer relationship management) database. This was an in-house programme which aimed to collate various data in order to better support their researchers. The value of this to Cranfield was clear but scaling it up to work in a large institution with a broader range of users proved to be the area for debate. The fascinating discussion about how valuable this could be, whilst trying to ascertain how it could be scaled up to a large institution, included debate over the role of the academic liaison librarians in forging strong links with their academics and researchers, the complexities of supporting users with additional needs, the various ways in which institutions were trying to converge student enquiries through one portal and issues relating to the maintenance and updating of an enquiries system. 

The next session I went to was facilitated by Ciara Eastell, who asked us what our dream library would look like. Brilliant ideas ranged from the imaginary, such as a library that maintained itself (ie repainting itself, never needing new carpets etc) and Johnny Depp reading to you over coffee, to slightly more realistic ones, like the importance of layout and flexible spaces in a library. Ciara promised to write up the ideas and share them. As for me, I felt that the use of colour and design to encourage users to behave differently would be worth investigating more. For instance, one person talked about the role of libraries in helping people to talk to each other and I wondered if the design, furniture and layout could really influence that. This isn't an original idea but one which really interests me. Oh and the real importance of natural light, which money can't always buy.

The final session I attended focused on a topic which isn't directly relevant to me in my current role but was fascinating nonetheless: it was all about how to get funding for projects. Tracey Guiry talked about the importance of partnerships when applying for funding and gave practical tips on how to go about identifying foundations and other sources of funding. I found this session fascinating because public librarians were asking questions about the sorts of projects which they would like to do, so it was a great insight into the challenges faced by librarians in another sector.

Plenty of coffee, home-made cakes and a delicious lunch made me forget the rain and I was really pleased to hear that there will be another libcampsw next year. I would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone (not just librarians) who are interested in meeting library workers across a variety of sectors, learning about new library developments, discussing ideas and sampling just a little bit of cake!

References

1. Open Space World (2012) What is Open Space Technology? Available from: http://www.openspaceworld.org/cgi/wiki.cgi?AboutOpenSpace [Accessed 08 July 2012].


Update - new link added: Ciara has written up some of the dream library ideas on the Library Camp SW wiki. 

Attempt at being sociable

Hello everyone. My name is Morwenna and I am librarian. Two years ago I went to the COFHE and UC&R joint annual conference in Exeter. I enjoyed the conference and I met up with an old friend from library school plus made a couple of new acquaintances. I talked to people before, during and after workshops and at dinner. I made eye contact with people and smiled a lot (not in a mad way...I don't think..). But it was quite difficult (most notably the informal drinks before the posh dinner SHUDDER) and I left on the last day thinking I could have done better at being more sociable. 

No Photos! by wafflechomper on Flickr

Since then, I have joined Twitter and starting blogging a lot more (and reading other people's blogs) so I think I will probably recognise some people's names on the delegate list when I go to two conferences this year - the ARLG conference in Newcastle and the DARTS3 conference in Dartington. But I would love to meet some of you, if you're going to either of these conferences. Really, what I should do is put a huge picture of my face on this post, but I can't quite bring myself to do it. So you'll have to squint at my tiny Twitter pic and I will have to continue with my efforts to say hello to people at events like these. If you do read this and you are going to one of these events, do say hello! 

I just read Bobbi Newman's survival tips for ALA whose list of recommendations includes:

"Meet new people - you're probably not going to meet new people if you're hanging out with the people you came with. Get out of your comfort zone, ask people what they want to get from the conference, how far they traveled etc, you never know what you'll learn or who you'll meet."

So I am going to do my best and I hope to meet some of you soon, and if you have any more tips on being more sociable at these sorts of events, let me know.

I