Instructional Goals

The Importance of Access to Librarians in High School

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Post written by Janell Verdream, Instruction Librarian at The Ohio State University- Newark and Central Ohio Technical College.

In 2021, I joined librarians from Miami University, Abigail Morgan and Jerry Yarnetsky, as they built on a study they conducted in 2019. We surveyed first-year students at Miami and OSU-Newark who attended high school in Ohio before coming to college. The main focus of our research was to investigate how access to librarians in high school may impact feelings of preparedness for college-level research. We were also interested in comparing high school typologies (district size, poverty levels, and district type such as rural, urban, etc.) as we viewed our survey results.

Overall, students reported feeling anxious when it comes to conducting college-level research and using their university library. Only 41.4% of the respondents reported feeling prepared for college-level research. We found that students who attended high school remotely during the Covid-19 pandemic felt especially less prepared.

The good news is that instruction from librarians in high school did seem to make a difference. Having learned research skills from a librarian (instead of another person, an online module, or not at all) was correlated with feeling more prepared. Additionally, the smallest amount of help from a librarian in high school makes a huge difference. Only 27% of students who never received librarian help reported feeling prepared. This percentage nearly doubles when students “rarely” received help, with 50% of those students feeling prepared. 62% of students who “occasionally” received librarian help felt prepared for college-level research, and the students who felt most prepared (83%) were helped “frequently” in high school.

The unfortunate news is that 54.5% of our respondents reported never receiving help from a librarian in high school. This percentage is even higher among the students who attended a small-town high school (72.4% never received help) and those who attended rural high schools (58.8% never received help). Furthermore, it is those students who received the least help that reported feeling the most intimidated by their college libraries.

Inspired by our study results, Abi, Jerry, and I have made some changes to our day-to-day interactions with students. We are reducing library jargon on our signage and websites, as well as going back to the basics (how to access the library website, how to read call numbers, etc.) in our one-shots. We encourage you to consider your students’ perceptions of their research abilities and their levels of library anxiety as you plan future instruction sessions.

If you would like to learn more about our study, you can find our presentation at ALAO Annual 2022 here. NEO-RLS members also have access to a recorded webinar from earlier this month. We will also be presenting our research at ALA Annual this summer with additional updates based on conversations we’ve had with other library-related professional organizations around the state.

Reflecting on Searching Strategy Development

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By Kerry Dhakal, MAA, MLS, Assistant Professor, Research and Education Librarian at The Ohio State University’s Health Sciences Library

How concepts are developed and how they are organized, searched and mapped in databases is the crux of searching the literature for me and what initially drew me to health sciences librarianship. Since becoming an MLS health sciences librarian, I have spent hours upon hours in learning, conducting, evaluating, revising, disseminating and publishing search strategies in collaboration with clinical healthcare providers, faculty and students in academia. Librarians regularly think about search strategy development, especially when teaching others, but we often do not have a lot of time to teach deeply on critically reflecting on search strategies. In May, I attended a presentation by Jolene Miller, University of Toledo, about reflective practice in health sciences librarianship. It got me thinking about how I can incorporate reflective thinking about searching in one-shot sessions or courses I help teach. I wanted to see if having students reflect on their strategy development was valuable for them in learning about the systematic search process, particularly since the product of their searching in the future will lead to guidelines, policies or practices that directly affect the care of patients.

In a course that I help teach in the fall each year, N8460 Integrative Reviews, the professor provided class time to students, the professor and myself to dive deeper into these types of observations. Why does using a certain keyword or subject heading pull articles on this relevant concept but not others? Why do certain subject headings, particularly those concerning demographics, include specific groups and not others, when the general understanding of that concept is that it should? Why do individual research databases have the same name for a concept but a different definition? These are great questions for students to ask.

This semester the professor and I also collaborated to develop a search strategy assignment. The doctoral (PhD) students in the course developed clinical or research questions, then I taught a full class session on how to search systematically in PubMed, using keywords, subject headings, and synonym searching techniques. The students were asked to submit the search strategies they developed for their questions in PubMed and to answer three questions reflecting on the steps that they took for developing their strategy. The assignment was a great success as not only did the students make observations about their search strategies, they commented that the process of reflecting on the assignment provided them with an opportunity to have time to critically think about the process of searching. The following class session, I provided additional guidance and tips for developing their search strategies more effectively. In that same class session, several of the students asked additional critical questions about the process of searching and about how the databases find articles, particularly focusing on article recall, sensitivity and specificity aspects of searching.

Next fall semester, I would like to take a second step and ask students to complete a survey to learn what reflecting on their practice taught them, based on the findings from Miller’s study (2020) about how reflection helps one identify personal strengths and weaknesses, gaps in knowledge or skills, achieving perspective, and recognizing errors (p25).

Here are some resources about reflective practice in the health sciences:

Miller J. M. (2020). Reflective practice and health sciences librarians: engagement, benefits, and barriers. Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA, 108(1), 17–28. https://doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2020.777
Winkel, A. F., Yingling, S., Jones, A. A., & Nicholson, J. (2017). Reflection as a Learning Tool in Graduate Medical Education: A Systematic Review. Journal of graduate medical education, 9(4), 430–439. https://doi.org/10.4300/JGME-D-16-00500.1

Raterink, G. (2016). Reflective Journaling for Critical Thinking Development in Advanced Practice Registered Nurse Students. The Journal of nursing education, 55(2), 101–104. https://doi.org/10.3928/01484834-20160114-08

Zori, S. (2016). Teaching Critical Thinking Using Reflective Journaling in a Nursing Fellowship Program. Journal of continuing education in nursing, 47(7), 321–329. https://doi.org/10.3928/00220124-20160616-09

Thompson, N., Pascal, J. (2012) Developing critically reflective practice, Reflective Practice, 13:2, 311-325, DOI: 10.1080/14623943.2012.657795

Setting Teaching Goals for 2021

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Written by Abigail Morgan, Social Sciences Librarian at Miami University

 

January is traditionally a time to pause, reflect, and set intentions for the next year. While 2020 and the early days of 2021 have taught me that our world can be upended in an instant and flexibility and openness to change is more important than ever, I still believe that goal-setting is an important practice. I also find that it helps bring stability and routine, even when working in less than ideal circumstances. Setting goals for learning is an inherent part of the instruction process, so it seems natural that now is the time to think about what I want to achieve in my teaching practice in the next calendar year. Here are the goals I’m setting:

Goal 1: Redesign lessons to incorporate critical pedagogy from the ground up

While I have been an enthusiastic proponent of critical pedagogy methods for several years, I have only been able to make small changes into my class sessions – such as using more diverse examples. In 2021, I’d like to move from proponent to active practitioner. This will entail overhauling several lessons I have taught many times in the past. My first priority is redesigning our mandatory first-year business student information literacy module to add more activities about authority and inclusion into the coursework, as well as more opportunities for discussion. I hope this will have a high impact since it reaches over 1,000 students. For the one-shot sessions I usually teach, I also plan on using less time in class on lecture, demonstrations, and individual activity and more time on group work and discussion. These practices will give students more voice and help them actively engage with the material.

Goal 2: Add more assessment from students

I confess I’m not the best at allotting time for student assessment of my teaching. That’s not because I think my teaching is perfect – in fact I suspect I’m my own worst critic. While I always include some sort of meaningful activity for students so they can demonstrate their learning, this is not the same as getting direct feedback. Incorporating more regular assessment of my instruction will make me see my teaching more clearly. One advantage of remote instruction is that it is easier to make assessment flow naturally into the pace of the lesson. I plan to make the most of remote instruction this spring to get more in the habit of assessing my sessions so by fall it will be easier to include in all instructional situations, online, hybrid, or face to face.

Goal 3: Preparing for in-person instruction in Fall 2021

I have been lucky enough to be able to work and teach from home throughout the pandemic.  When we resume classes for fall semester 2021, I will have been out of practice teaching in front of a class for over a year. Of course, conducting instruction via Zoom or Canvas modules is real teaching, but it requires a different approach than in-person instruction. Just as it took time to get used to the feeling of teaching through the barrier of technology, I think it will take another adjustment to adapt back into teaching face to face. My skills are rusty: my ‘teacher voice’ is unexercised and my ability to stand comfortably for 50 minutes in work appropriate shoes is non-existent! At the same time, I’m eager to teach in person again and I believe that students and faculty will share the same sense of delight returning to the classroom.

I’d love to hear from others about what they are planning to work on in 2021. What are your 2021 goals for teaching and learning?