Univeristy of Tennessee Knoxville Increasing Effective Student Use of the Scientific Journal Literature Award: DUE

Univeristy of Tennessee Knoxville Principal Investigator Dr. Carol Tenopir, Professor Faculty Associate Dr. Richard Pollard, Associate Professor Faculty Associate Dr. Peiling Wang, Associate Professor

Univeristy of Tennessee Knoxville National Science Digital Library Services Track December 2002 All Projects Meeting Washington, DC Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology Education Program

Univeristy of Tennessee Knoxville General Questions How can undergraduate students be encouraged to recognize and use high quality science journal literature? What features in a journal literature digital collection would be most useful to undergraduate science students and would encourage use? What features would be most useful to graduate students and faculty in the sciences for their students and to encourage use?

Univeristy of Tennessee Knoxville Primary Objectives Gain an understanding of what features make a science journal article digital collection an important and interactive tool for sustained use by undergraduate students in the sciences Begin to develop interactive learning modules which increase the usability of a science journal article digital collection

Univeristy of Tennessee Knoxville Phase 1: Focus Groups and Surveys Undergraduates Graduates (Graduate Teaching Assistants) Faculty ORNL Scientists

Univeristy of Tennessee Knoxville Variations By Grade Level “Students should be exposed to the literature at the junior or senior level. Freshmen don’t care. They faint easily.” “Require freshmen to read journal articles? I’m just glad they read the textbook”.

Univeristy of Tennessee Knoxville Variations By Subject Discipline “Engineers read each article and spend a lot of time on each.” “Chemistry has a long tradition … they have a corpus of textbooks and literature specialists.”

Univeristy of Tennessee Knoxville Access Means For Articles and Search Strategies “Students want what they can print out. Immediate gratification. They need it now. Quick and easy. They don’t recognize the fact it isn’t in English.” “If something is from.edu it has credibility.” “I did a web tutorial a year ago but don’t remember any of it.”

Univeristy of Tennessee Knoxville Variations In Type Of Literature Required And Faculty Recommendations “Contrived searches are the worse. One professor would assign 10 articles to be defined on a nonsense topic. What made him stop? He retired.” “Start with an encyclopedia … move to a treatise … monograph … articles … etc. Make a process”. “Information literacy should be built into and reinforced in every course.”

Univeristy of Tennessee Knoxville Problems With Journals And Access “One student in the library said, “I’m supposed to find a ‘referee’”. “It’s like the World Trade Center. What is that literature going to come out?”

Univeristy of Tennessee Knoxville Purposes For Using Journal Articles “Professors give websites for data … not journal articles, but data”. “A small paper, a small project”.

Univeristy of Tennessee Knoxville Phase 2 (2003): Testing January – May Testing of specified desired features Testbed is a full text subset of OSTI’s Energy Citations Database

Univeristy of Tennessee Knoxville Collection Testbed: Energy Citations Database

Univeristy of Tennessee Knoxville Collection Testbed: PrePRINT Network

Univeristy of Tennessee Knoxville Collection Testbed: Information Bridge

Univeristy of Tennessee Knoxville Ultimate Goal The ultimate goal of this project is to identify, test and implement features of the NSDL collection (and specifically OSTI journal literature digital collections) that will enhance the appeal and encourage sustained use by undergraduate science students

Univeristy of Tennessee Knoxville