Library Course Assignment Pages: Helping Students with

Research Skills

UENR 2008, Corvallis Oregon

Margaret Mellinger, Valley Library

Kate Gronemyer, Cascades Library

Learning Outcomes • Discuss what you want your students

to learn from a research project

• Identify some of the problems students have using library resources when they are doing coursework

• Understand how librarians can help you help your students.

Starting with Students

What do you want your students to gain from a research project?

Problems with Research

What problems do students have with research and in using the

library to do research?

Student Perceptions

“Just remember that students are less informed about the

resources of the library than ever before because they are

competing heavily with the Internet.”

OCLC, 2005

Student Perceptions

• 2% of students start their research on a library web page

• Students have a model of “self-service”

• Students need a starting place

Librarians can help

• Collaborate with instructors to build assignments.• Visit classes and teach students how to access

library tools that they will use for a particular research project

• Create web pages for particular courses to give students clear starting points for their assignments.

.

Libraries creating course pages

And your library…?

Publishing Tool

Faculty Responses

“. . . more students creating their own maps, more students using census data, and more students who appeared to understand in-text citation and bibliography formats.”

“It certainly makes my job easier because for students who do not use the library frequently, the webpage provides them with a bit of security about doing the research that is required.”

Student Responses

“I had to spend less time on source research & spent more time thinking about

writing”

“I showed the ICA to a professor in fisheries & encouraged him to think

offering about offering something similar.”

Student Responses

“Very nice to have one source to begin to find the information I

needed to complete my assignment”

“I would not have been able to find all of these resources if they had not been sorted and

placed in one convenient website.”

Take away message

• We can work with what students already know and do to help them approach research in a better way

• Students need a starting place—it won’t be the library unless we make it.

• Your librarians can be partners in improving student research.

Notes

College Students' Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources. OCLC. 2005. http://www.oclc.org/reports/perceptionscollege.htm

Studying Students: The Undergraduate Research Project at the University of Rochester. 2007. http://docushare.lib.rochester.edu/docushare/dsweb/View/Collection-4436

Notes

Oregon State University Libraries ICAPs areon the OSUL’s home page under a link called“Get Help with a class”http://ica.library.oregonstate.edu/Course_Assignment_Pages

Read about the ICAPs and download the open source software http://ica.library.oregonstate.edu/about/features.html

Thank you!

Questions?