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Keeping the Conversation Alive: Maintaining Students' Research Skills Throughout Their College Careers
Conference proceeding   Open access

Keeping the Conversation Alive: Maintaining Students' Research Skills Throughout Their College Careers

Jay Bhatt, Larry Milliken, Lloyd Ackert and Eleanor Goldberg
Association for Engineering Education - Engineering Library Division Papers, pp 22.989.1-22.989.8
26 Jun 2011
DOI: https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--18232
url
https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--18232View
Published, Version of Record (VoR)Maybe Open Access (Publisher Bronze),  Open

Abstract

Colleges & universities Historians Information literacy Information resources Librarians Libraries Scientific papers Skills Students User training Engineering Engineering Education Information Retrieval Vision
The library’s electronic resources collection is constantly becoming more exhaustive, leading to ever increasing challenges in instructing students in information skills. At our university, first-year engineering students get formalized instruction in information research skills, but they do not receive additional library instruction until they become seniors. This gap most often results in students losing their ability to efficiently use library databases in their middle college years; and they often need reminders of basic research skills for their senior projects. All engineering students are required to take a course called “Technology in Historical Perspective” during their sophomore year. This course, offered by the College of Arts and Sciences, examines the causal interrelations between technological progress and developments in economic, social, intellectual, and political aspects of Western civilization from the 18th century to the present. To help the engineering students refine and enhance their information seeking skills, the university’s humanities and social science librarian, the engineering librarian, other library staff, and history department faculty, will collaborate to design a new library research instruction strategy. This paper outlines a vision for formalized integration of library research instruction into the curriculum for this course. This vision includes activities promoting engaged student learning and possible methods to assess acquired student information competence during the term of the course. Students are required to conduct in-depth research for their term papers using a wide variety of resources including engineering and history databases, primary literature published in patents, and others. One of the activities envisioned is an interactive session to gauge whether students need additional help in finding sources for their projects. We expect this approach will help students to maintain and improve their research skills between their first and final college years and improve their overall information literacy in a range of subjects outside of engineering. Additionally, it will prevent the seemingly inevitable last-minute crunch that students encounter when writing research papers, which will result in improved final projects.

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