The first chart tells what topics the students felt that we had helped them to improve their research skills. 71% of the students strongly agreed that the librarian helped them find an article; 62% of the students strongly agreed that the librarian helped them learn how to use a database. 59% of students strongly agreed that the librarian helped them brainstorm keywords and finally 52% of students strongly agreed that the librarian helped narrow their topic. 75% of students strongly agreed with the statement that the librarian in their course was helpful.
We need to know why students are not contacting the online course librarian. The reason with the highest number of students is “didn’t need to”. It would be interesting to the know the resources these students used in their research assignments to gauge if they in fact used credible resources or not. It is also good to see that several students answered that “librarian taught me in class”, which goes to show students benefit from library instruction.
Most students strongly agreed or agreed that working with the OCL improved their research skills and understanding of library resources and services. Three students disagreed with this statement and five students strongly disagreed with this statement.
It is important to understand why a student contacted the OCL Librarian. Finding articles and researching/narrowing their topic was the biggest reasons students sought help from the OCL Librarian. This shows the need for research librarians as well as library instruction.
Answers to Question 9 helps the librarians to know what they are doing correctly. Knowing that our response time and availability was the most helpful thing to students, tell the librarians that they are managing their embedded classes appropriately. Students like the fact they know who to contact and that their OCL Librarian knows about their assignment/topic/course. This speaks directly to being embedded in a course and seeing the syllabus and knowing the requirements of assignments.
Some student responses were placed in several different categories due to mentioning multiple things in their responses. Specific librarians were named 59 times in the survey, most mentioning how helpful or great the librarian was in their course. The ninety-three N/A or nothing responses in the last question, almost all responses had positive comments in addition to answering that the program needed no improvements.
