1. Bridging the Gap: Self-paced research skills mini-course for graduate students
Patricia Hall Hurley
Assistant Professor of Information Literacy
North Park University
Information Literacy Summit – April 20, 2018

2. North Park University

3. The population
Newly admitted graduate students to the Masters of Counseling Psychology program.
Taking their first required course: Counseling Theories
Master’s program: F2F, on main campus, two nights a week
7 week quads class schedule
Most students take two classes per quad
Different educational backgrounds
20 page final research paper

4. Needs Assessment (kind of….)
Problem: Newly admitted graduate students to the Counseling Psychology program were unprepared for scholarly and professional writing expectations and standards.
GAP: Students lacked knowledge of what was scholarly research
GAP: Students lacked the skills set to seek out good scholarly and trade sources to support their academic assignments
GAP: Students had minimum or no knowledge of APA citation and formatting

5. Collaboration (or the worlds longest planning meeting!)
Librarian
Program
director
Professor
Wrting Coord.

6. Aligning Expectations
Data
base
skills
No extra work!!!
APA
CITING
Integrating
sources

7. ACRL Frameworks (what is really important)
Research as Inquiry
Searching as Strategic Exploration
Scholarship as Conversation
Authority Is Constructed and Contextual

8. Agreed upon Learning Outcomes
Course Learning Objectives:
Students will…
confidently research a subject specific database for scholarly inquiry
be able to distinguish between Popular, Scholarly, and Trade Publications and when to strategically use them within a graduate level research paper
evaluate and annotate source to determine it’s authority
be able integrating and synthesizing sources for academic writing to support their own thesis's and arguments
Correctly format and cite using APA style

9. Field of Dreams…of you build it
Scaffold assignments
6 week – 6 modules – 6 steps to research
Ideally keeping students on a timeline for writing their final paper
Professor is NOT teaching research
Librarian is giving feedback and support throughout 6 week process
Mix of learning styles (print-video-screen shots)
Low stakes grading

10. Building it….
Week 1:  Beginning Your Research – keywords and subject database
Week 2:  Popular, Scholarly, and Trade Publications- find two articles
Week 3:  Vetting and Evaluating Sources – annotate a scholarly article
Week 4:  Integrating and Synthesizing Sources – create a citation sandwich using the annotated article
Week 5:  APA Formatting – format a sample paper, set up format for final paper
Week 6:  APA Citation quiz, optional librarian review of citations

11. Roll out and Student communication
Students were sent a friendly invitation from librarian (me) to join the class with the objectives and reason for the mandate to finish it.
Professor(s) told students of GS 5085 obligation during first class session
Librarian stops by class to introduce themselves and pass out business cards – 5 minutes
Follow up letter to student week two to GET STARTED
Follow-up letter at midweek (end of week four) and status report to professor(s)
Class ends the Sunday after the final – grades due Monday

12. Scaffolding, scaffolding, scaffolding
“No extra work!!” assignment what they need for the final paper (broke our own rules: APA quiz)

13. Success! Success? 88% average 1 incomplete 1 failure
Fall 2017: 35 students
88% average
1 incomplete
1 failure
Spring 2018: 8 students
93% average
0 incompletes
0 failures

14. Assessing Success
Undergraduate sample class with no class assigned – 50 % success rate, % average
IDEA student survey
90% found the course extremely helpful
80% found the course intellectually challenging
90% found the professor (me) knowledgeable and helpful
Professor feedback: happy, happy, happy!

15. Moving Forwards
Business graduate program Undergraduate Capstone class in my liaison areas Break apart modules for plug and play

16. Discussion, thoughts, recommendations questions?