Overall, the students were able to complete the given activities during the library instruction session and the faculty members provided meaningful and thoughtful feedback about the model. Faculty members specifically mentioned that the activities in this lesson help their students retain information. There was a large improvement in students identifying newspaper resources. Students also did very well when they were narrowing down their topics and writing research questions about their topics, especially when they were given topics that were relevant to freshman student life.
With most of the faculty members responses being very positive about the library instruction session and most of the students doing well with the in-class activities, the instruction session should continue with the same lesson with some minor adjustments based on faculty responses and student activity scores.
Based on how students completed the library activities and how faculty responded to the survey, the library should continue with this new model for English 111 library instruction with a few changes.
There are several changes to be made to identification of a scholarly article activity. The first suggested change to the form is during the article identification portion to change the wording to say, “Does this article have more than 10 pages?” instead of “How many pages is the article?”. This will alleviate some question regarding if the appendices and bibliography apply towards the number of pages in a scholarly article. When scoring identification of a scholarly article, librarians noticed that several students were able to correctly identify all the aspects of a scholarly article except the page numbers because they wouldn’t count certain parts of the articles toward the total number. The second change to this section is to select a new scholarly article. The current scholarly article does not have the authors’ credentials on the front page.
Another recommendation is that when librarians are teaching how to write a research question, they should emphasize that research questions should not be yes or no questions. There were several submitted research questions that could be answered with a yes or a no.
It is also very important to increase communication methods with faculty to assure library session expectations are congruent and understood. In addition to the current library orientation session for faculty that covers the library instruction lesson and its learning outcomes, expanding communication methods could also include an email follow up about student session expectations and an in-class faculty assessment.
Also, give faculty members a recommended date range for scheduling library instruction based on their due dates so that students are not too far behind or too far ahead of the content being covered in the course. It is also important to share the results of the assessment with the faculty members. Another way that librarians can assist faculty members is to offer a second library instruction session where students can do independent research with a librarian or a librarian can go over more specific resources in detail. Lastly, English 111 faculty could utilize the course librarian program so a librarian could assist students from within their Canvas course during the entire term.
In the student reflection, it is also recommended to ask students what they are still confused about after the lesson. This way librarians can gauge what students are still having difficulty grasping and follow up with the faculty member about specific topics that their class needs additional assistance on. This question could lead to an email explaining things to students, a digital handout emailed to them, a tutorial linked via Canvas or another library instruction session focused on clearing up this issue.
These recommendations come from the data collected in the activities, the reflection that the students filled out, and the faculty survey results.