Blind Faith | Peer to Peer Review
Students turn to their instructors for help with research - but they probably could teach their professors a thing or two.Barbara Fister, Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, MN
Jul 15, 2010In the past week I have had two moments of epiphany. Well, actually, it's probably more accurate to call them moments of "you're kidding, right? Are you serious?"
The first instance came when reviewing a couple of chapters of a college writing handbook, something I do occasionally for a textbook publisher; they like to have a librarian review the section on how to write a research paper because the authors, usually faculty members in English departments or writing programs, may not be up to speed with the newest developments. Often, it's merely a matter of looking at the material from a previous edition and seeing what needs updating—which brings home exactly how fluid the library environment is. In four or five years, nearly everything about how the library works will have changed.
It's not just nuts and bolts; often completely new tools have surfaced, or trusty tools have morphed into something quite different. It's a useful reminder that what we teach students in their first year will have changed radically by the time they're working on their senior thesis, something to think about given that most students report that their primary contact with librarians is in their first year orientation to the library. (See page 28 of this study).
But at other times, I'm looking at a draft of a new book, and I'm often struck—well, let's be honest, always struck—by how the authors describe library resources. They invariably say "most libraries no longer have card catalogs." Actually, most students have never seen a card catalog. Heck, a lot of their teachers have never used a card catalog. And when it comes to databases, the authors usually draw an analogy to the Reader's Guide. This is not likely to make any light bulbs go off. When I show students how to look up articles in Reader's Guide for historical research, it's as if I just donned a bonnet and churned up some butter for them. "Wow, is that how it used to be? Crazy."
Old school
Sometimes these authors go to extreme lengths to explain how to go from the MLA International Bibliography (as if a freshman would even go there, or should) to a journal article by looking up the title of the journal in the catalog and then locating the journal on the shelf. Haven't these authors noticed that most journals the library subscribes to these days are electronic? And while I wouldn't expect a faculty member to know the term "link resolver," I certainly would have expected they would have encountered one and used it at some point. As in: "check to see if there's a button thingy in the database that will show you whether the article is available."
Another common cause for sudden-onset frustration baldness is the way scholarly journals are described: "Articles are long - usually twenty pages or more - and rarely include graphics. Unlike magazines, you won't find advertisements in scholarly journals, except perhaps a few tucked at the back of the issue." This may be a reasonable description of a journal in some of the humanities, but not in the sciences - but it hardly matters because the chances a beginning researcher will actually hold an issue in print are close to nil.
That's why the publisher has a librarian take a look, and authors take suggestions with good grace. But it makes me aware of the fact that faculty who may be adept at conducting research in their own fields have a hard time teaching undergraduates the ropes, because in trying to simplify the process, they seem to harken back to their own undergraduate experience and describe how libraries worked in the mid-1980s. Unfortunately, these are people teaching students right now. It also makes me realize that faculty would probably have a hard time finding good sources on a subject they are unfamiliar with—a task they routinely give their students.
Just read the assignment
A new study just released by Project Information Literacy (PIL) brought on my second moment of zen. In it, principal investigators Alison Head and Michael Eisenberg collected and analyzed nearly 200 research assignment prompts from faculty in a variety of disciplines and institutions. This faculty perspective provides an intriguing counterbalance to PIL's previous study of what students do when they tackle a research project. What they learned is perhaps not shocking to anyone who has worked at a reference desk, but worth thinking about.
Most of the assignments submitted by faculty called for fairly traditional "research papers"—the genre that Richard Larsen back in 1982 famously called "a non-form of writing." The research paper, in which you find sources on a topic you know little about and propose and defend a thesis about the topic using those sources, is a genre only found in college classrooms. I am not arguing it's worthless, just that it's a curious artifact in an era when there are so many ways to put inquiry to work in more authentic ways.
Most of the assignments they examined were fairly explicit about what the finished product should look like, but most did not offer hints on how the student should conduct the research and rarely bothered to explain why the assignment was being thrust upon them. Learning outcomes were assumed: you'll learn about whatever you write your paper on, and you'll demonstrate that you can follow rules for identifying sources that are important to scholars, but not used by other writers, such as investigative journalists writing for the New York Times or an essayist explaining the recession on This American Life. In short, these rules don't apply to the kind of researched writing you will encounter most often in daily life, and you'll probably never use them after you graduate, but they are really, really important.
Finally, though the assignments said little about how to find sources or how to recognize good ones, 60 percent of the assignment prompts recommended or required that students use sources found on library shelves. Another 43 percent suggested students use library databases (but rarely which ones), and 26 percent recommended students use websites. In reality, the previous PIL study found that virtually all students use the web for research and nearly all use library databases, while only a little over half reported going to library shelves for sources.
The reason why
One other interesting point from both studies: most students don't turn to librarians for help; they ask their teachers. And while faculty who were interviewed for the new study often said they valued help from librarians, they rarely put that in writing as advice for students.
I'm not suggesting they should leave this kind of instruction to the experts—librarians. But I sometimes think faculty lose sight of the fact that being able to find and use sources is not just for college. All citizens should be able to seek information and draw their own conclusions without deferring to a higher authority. They should be able to evaluate evidence and value arguments that use it. They should be able to think critically about things that they encounter in society, things they didn't learn in school and have to figure out on their own.
I wish faculty would bear those goals in mind as they create assignments, because those are goals worth striving for. And they are valuable skills for all citizens—even faculty.
Barbara Fister is a librarian at Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, MN, a contributor to ACRLog, and an author of crime fiction. Her latest mystery, Through the Cracks (see review), has just been published by Minotaur Books.
