“Managing the Rogue Assignment” and research assignment design

I’ve been subscribing to ACRL RSS feeds for awhile, and the ACRLInsider blog includes tables of contents and links to full text for both College and Research Libraries (requires ACRL login for full text) and C&RL News (appears to be free).    This month’s C&RL News includes an article and accompanying author podcast about steps to dealing with “rogue” — poorly planned or constructed — research assignments.   I’m not sure all of the advice would work in every situation, but I believe that research assignment design and consultation is a key area that we need to be more deeply involved in.

I’ve been working with Brad Hughes of the Writing Center/Writing-across-the Curriculum to design and facilitate faculty workshops on library research assignment design.   Brad has agreed to collaborate with us this summer on workshops and other training tools for librarians who would like to be more engaged in and knowledgeable about assignment consultation.   Ideally, we’ll be involved not just in assuring that students are directed to the appropriate discovery tools, but also helping faculty develop learning outcomes and assessment strategies.

Uncovering assumptions about the Research Process

People sometimes ask me what we’re reading in LIS 826, the information literacy practicum that includes a number of class meetings and readings. This week, we’re reading an older article that does a good job of introducing the idea that faculty have a different take on undergraduate research. Faculty do care about supporting undergraduate researchers, it’s that they see research through the lens of their own experience as expert researchers in a specific subject area. This seems like an important idea to share with new librarians if we want to prepare them for faculty/librarian collaborations.

Leckie, Gloria. “Desperately Seeking Citations: Uncovering Faculty Assumptions about the Undergraduate Research Process.” JAL May 1996 201-208. http://tinyurl.com/yutcwl

Mellon Assessment Report

It’s up!!!! I spent several years working as the Assessment Consultant for the Mellon Library/Faculty Fellowship for Undergraduate Research The goals of the project were to redesign courses and assignments to incorporate research-based learning. My activities included facilitating sessions on assessment in a summer faculty institute, working with teams of support staff to implement redesigned courses (often very large courses), and working with faculty to develop strategies for assessing student learning. You can read more about my work on the project and what we learned in the Assessment of Student Learning Report.

Faculty Workshop on Research Assignment Design

Yesterday, I co-facilitated a workshop with Brad Hughes, Director of the Writing and Writing-across-the-Curriculum Programs, on “Designing Effective Library Research Assignments.” Here’s the description:

“Co-led by the director of the Library and Information Literacy Instruction program and the director of the L&S Program in Writing Across the Curriculum. What makes a successful and engaging library research assignment? Not sure what your expectations are, or that you’re communicating clear expectations to your students? Disappointed with the quality of the research your students produce? In this discussion-based workshop, we will learn about the ways that good assignment design can guide students to develop valued research skills, engage critically with source materials, and avoid common pitfalls such as plagiarism.”

I’ve co-facilitated a number of workshops on this topic, mostly for UC Berkeley’s GSI Teaching and Resource Center, which prepares graduate student instructors for teaching. I always learn a great deal from my co-facilitators from other parts of campus, and Brad is particularly knowledgeable about assignment design and a skilled facilitator, so this was a very rewarding collaboration for me. The downside was that we only got a few attendees, including a librarian and a few people from a language department. They were all very thoughtful about the relationship between undergraduate research in learning, as well as the role of the instructor, so I found the conversation very interesting. We’ll be repeating the workshop for the Teaching and Learning Symposium, and we’ll continue to refine the content and hope for more attendees next time.

I’m also thinking about how to share this content with more librarians, revising our existing materials on assignment design, and how to work more closely with the Writing Center when faculty consult with them about assignment design.