How and Why We Set 300 Freshman Engineering Students Loose in the Library

1. How and Why We Set 300 Freshman Engineering Students Loose in the Library

2. The need for new methods • … to introduce information literacy to freshman engineering students • Studio logistics and selected stations • Credibility • Non-traditional sources • Search strategies • (Our) results and insights • The Research Studio in 2011-09

3. Praxis I and Freshman Information Literacy 

4. Picking Low-hanging Fruit • Lack of familiarity with Academic sources • Lack of Non-traditional sources • Inability to Develop Usable Search Terms • Inability to Judge Credibility of Sources

5. Too Much or Not Enough … or not • 300 students with questions • Impromptu sessions can’t do it all • Generic sessions aren’t { attended, used } • Many questions to manage or not enough students who know where to start • Students often aren’t aware of what they need to know • Students think that they already know how to search efficiently and effectively

6. Logistics • 300 students over 3 days • 33 teams of 3 students per day • 6 stations to visit per team • 2 Instructors + 1 Librarian + 8 TAs Mutual interdependence

8. ➃ ➄ ➅ ➀ ➁ ➂

17. Nontraditional Information Sources

20. Evaluating Information & Nontraditional Sources • Students still swayed by aesthetics • Students developed long lists of potential information sources • Planning to add additional reflection and discussion time in iteration #2 • Next step is teaching them how to find those different sources • Greater emphasis on “people” as information sources – experts, including librarians

21. Evaluating Search Strategies • Synonyms, colloquialisms, and the familiar • Added thesauri & dictionaries • Much discussion of places to search • Disconnect between a “search strategy” and actually searching Prince Edward Viaduct Bloor St. Viaduct Don Valley bridge vs. vs.

22. General Results and Insights • Stakeholders were generally positive • Logistics were… challenging… in ECSLS • Seniors as TA-facilitators really helped • Instructors, Librarians, facilitators, students • Work and computer space, noise, etc.

24. General Results and Insights • Stakeholders were generally positive • Logistics were… challenging… in ECSL • Seniors as TA-facilitators really helped • Instructors, Librarians, facilitators, students • Work and computer space, noise, etc. • Flexibility was a mixed blessing • Insightful student (blogged) comments • Implications for outreach, marketing, IL instruction

25. Design Assignment • Significantly longer reference lists • More (qualitatively) credible sources • A continued disbelief in strategizing • Whether those reference lists were actually used appropriately has become an assessment issue • The credible use of those sources improved concurrently, which was an added bonus • This occurs in almost everything they do, and has become a program-wide concern

26. The Research Studio in 2011-09 • Increased emphasis on codes & standards • Mitigate their “get ’er done” mentality • “Gamification” • Makes the accreditors happy and links the Studio to more than one assignment • Reduce the structuring and scaffolding to prevent “fill in the blanks” overload • Change to “skills + achievements + unlocking” to enable more (and offline) flexibility