E NHANCING THE L EARNING E XPERIENCE OF S TUDENTS IN C OLLABORATION B ETWEEN THE L IBRARY AND THE A CADEMIC W RITING C ENTER AT CEU Ivett Molnár CEU Library Ágnes Tóth CEU Center for Academic Writing

S TRUCTURE OF THE PRESENTATION ● Institutional context of our collaboration ● Collaboration from the Librarian perspective ● Collaboration from the Faculty perspective ● Possible ways of collaboration in the future

I NSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT Central European University, Budapest, Hungary 1381 students from 100 countries, only graduate courses in law, business and social sciences and humanities, 1 or 2 year degree, tight schedule → no possible way to establish Information Literacy courses BUT “In a word, we do information literacy because we have to.” (Wilder 2013)

IL SESSIONS IN THE PAST ● Single sessions- scattered, only partly effective ● Isolated but most effective solution – when faculty (only from 1 department) invited librarians to give a single- session information literacy instruction in the frame of their course –meaningful context

C OLLABORATION WITH THE A CADEMIC W RITING C ENTER Theory – holistic approach to information literacy; blurring the lines between information and academic literacies. (Martin 2013) Practice: the academic writing instructors invite librarians for a single-session information literacy instruction in the frame of their courses Contextualized

C ENTER FOR A CADEMIC W RITING AT CEU We provide courses in graduate academic/ research/policy writing for social sciences majors and PhD students We also offer individual consultations (during the 2011/12 academic year we provided nearly 4100 writing consultations to MA and PhD students as well as faculty)

H OW THIS SINGLE GROUP SESSION LOOKS LIKE Focus on personal information management – ZOTERO ( Cahoy 2013) Showing the databases that are relevant to the given students Web scale discovery + search strategies Method: Hands-on + individual problem solving

F URTHER ONE - TO - ONE SESSIONS Later on – one-to-one sessions with the students - importance of informal learning and meeting individual needs

F ACULTY M OTIVATIONS Students should be aware of the proper use of sources More students get the training if it is embedded into the writing course We do not need to deal with hundreds of technical questions in our classes on using sources

F ACULTY R ESERVATIONS Time-consuming – as it is not part of the official syllabus, there is one class less Not effective enough – not enough librarians are present, students have to wait for each other, technical issues Varying teaching skills/experience of librarians – faculty less willing to co-teach sessions

H OW STUDENTS ARE MOTIVATED Citation software saves them time They can build their own corpus They can share and collaborate They can get individual help in their research from librarians

S TUDENT R EACTIONS Positive feedback: useful new knowledge/skill, relevant, discipline-specific, more aware of library resources and services Negative feedback: too fast, only the basics in one session, technical problems, waiting for others

M ORE EFFECTIVE COLLABORATION FROM THE FACULTY PERSPECTIVE More effective collaboration: librarians, academic writing instructors and other faculty working together in the theme of integrating sources into research writing: how to find literature, how to select sources critically, how to integrate the work of other authors effectively into their writing, how to critically engage with literature

C OLLABORATION FROM THE LIBRARY ’ S PERSPECTIVE Faculty setting assignments where students need to consult librarians

F URTHER WAYS OF COLLABORATION BETWEEN LIBRARY AND FACULTY How could we extend the power of single-session information literacy instructions? How do you collaborate in your institution? Would you have any further suggestions?

R EFERENCES - Cahoy, Ellysa Stern “Affective Learning and Personal Information Management: Essential Components of Information Literacy.” Communications in Information Literacy 7 (2): 146–49. doi: /cil.v7i Martin, Justine “Refreshing Information Literacy: Learning from Recent British Information Literacy Models.” Communications in Information Literacy 7 (2): 114–27. doi: /cil.v7i Wilder, Stanley J “A Reconsideration of Information Literacy.” Communications in Information Literacy 7 (2): 150–53. doi: /cil.v7i2.247.

Thank you I VETT M OLNÁR Á GNES T ÓTH