Hannah Gascho Rempel

Providing Information Literacy Instruction to Graduate Students through Literature Review Workshops

As future professionals, graduate students must be information literate; however, information literacy instruction of graduate students is often neglected. To address this need, we created literature review workshops to serve graduate students from a wide range of subject disciplines at a point of shared need. Not only did this strategy prove to be successful in reaching a large number of students from a wide range of subject disciplines, the data gathered from the students identified some of the gaps graduate students have in their knowledge about library services.

Using Courseware Discussion Boards to Engage Graduate Students in Online Library Workshops

ABSTRACT Librarians at Oregon State University (OSU) Libraries used the discussion board features of Blackboard courseware to create an interactive experience for graduate students at a distance who could not attend the on-campus “Literature Review Workshops.” These recently developed workshops have been extremely popular with graduate students across the disciplines and have generated a growing demand from distance education graduate students and faculty to offer similar information online. Reluctant to simply deliver content via an online tutorial, librarians sought to duplicate the workshop atmosphere by making the sessions available for a short time-period online, asking participants to respond to discussion questions at specific points in the workshop, and offering audio-mediated online demonstrations of tools and resources. Student feedback and follow-up requests for more workshops support the perception that this approach offered a rewarding learning experience that addressed their specific adult learning needs.

Examining Student Research Choices and Processes in a Disintermediated Searching Environment

Students today perform research in a disintermediated environment, which often allows them to struggle directly with the process of selecting research tools and choosing scholarly sources. The authors conducted a qualitative study with twenty students, using structured observations to ascertain the processes students use to select databases and choose sources for a typical undergraduate research assignment outside of the classroom. Based on these observations, the authors developed three personas depicting different approaches to the research process. The authors make recommendations for improving students’ success in selecting research tools in a disintermediated environment.

The library as learning commons: rethink, reuse, recycle

At Oregon State University (OSU) Libraries, librarians are evaluating the decade-old information commons in the transition to a learning commons. Visits to commons spaces at libraries across the country provided perspective on this transition. This paper describes the development of the OSU Libraries Information Commons, identifies themes from our trips to other commons, and discusses the idea that we need to incorporate the concepts of the commons throughout the library in recognition that wherever our students are in the library becomes their learning commons.

Share and Share Alike: Barriers and Solutions to Tutorial Creation and Management

Using data gathered in a nationwide survey, we found the most important barriers to tutorial creation for instruction librarians are time and technological expertise. Drawing on our experience extending the content management system used to build class pages and subject guides, we suggest using a content management system, like Library a la Carte, or LibGuides to build tutorials suggests a path around these common barriers.