Final Report to the IMLS

Enhancing Developmental Research Skills in the Undergraduate Curriculum: Final Report to the IMLS

We have just completed the second year of our two-year grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. This report will summarize what we did, what we learned in the process, how we have disseminated that knowledge, and what we plan to do next.

Our project had three parts: outreach to librarians in similar colleges in the region, development programs for our faculty, and a research and assessment agenda. It is safe to say the first two parts of the project were a resounding success, one that we hope to build on. The third part is a work still in progress but is off to a good start. Certainly, we have found a number of ways, formal and informal, to share what we have learned. We hope other institutions will learn from us and will be able use ideas from our project to help them develop their own programs.

Summer Institutes for Librarians

We held two intensive workshops for librarians from liberal arts colleges in the area. These Summer Institutes spanned two days and provided opportunities to share ideas, work on common issues, and generate solutions. The emphasis for both Institutes was on combining theory and practice. Participants were sent pre-reading materials in advance and were asked to prepare informal presentations. The setting-with lodging for participants provided on our campus at a guest house and retreat center-gave participants a chance to interact informally throughout the Institutes. We also had evening gatherings for wine and cheese and poetry readings by poets affiliated with our campus, which added a cultural dimension that participants appreciated.

First Institute: Teaching and Learning

The first Institute focused on teaching and learning and involved participants in a busy schedule of group activities, including discussion of active learning strategies, working through case studies on how to tackle difficult classes, and sharing ideas from our programs. We opened with a panel of Gustavus faculty who were selected to participate in the IMLS-funded faculty development program who discussed problems their students encounter as they do research and how they address those problems. We intentionally started with this panel in order to emphasize collaboration with faculty across the disciplines-and to give our faculty a greater sense of involvement in the entire grant project. We ended the first summer workshop with a discussion of two national information literacy efforts-reviewing the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education (adopted by the Association of College and Research Libraries in January 2000) and the Best Practices project under development by the Institute of Information Literacy. This conclusion was intended to expand our horizons to the national scene.

Second Institute: Assessing Learning Outcomes in the Library

The second Institute centered on assessment-specifically, how libraries can design assessment programs that focus on student learning outcomes. This topic was chosen in part because the new Standards for College Libraries (adopted by the ACRL in January 2000) embrace a new perspective on planning and assessment, one firmly focused on the learning process. Good assessment practices lead to better teaching, and teaching and learning is central to the mission of our libraries, yet until recently, most library assessment was limited to input measures-how many books were on the shelves, how much money was spent on journals, and the like. It seemed to us that this shift in attention to learning outcomes is a healthy development, but one that requires a good deal of retooling on the part of libraries.

The second Institute opened with a presentation by two Gustavus faculty who are involved in preparing the campus for an accreditation visit in 2003. (All of the colleges represented at this institute are accredited by the North Central Association.) The presentations gave us a good handle on changing assumptions underlying accreditation processes today and how academic libraries might approach assessing its role in student learning outcomes. Other parts of the program involved a workshop on designing quantitative measures conducted by a faculty member involved in our faculty development program, matching outcomes with assessment measures, designing specific assessment tools, and deciding on institutional action plans to implement after the Institute. We finished by discussing how we might continue working together after the IMLS funding period was over. There was a strong desire expressed by participants to have similar gatherings in the future.

Response

In fact, the responses to both Institutes were overwhelmingly positive. Participants felt they provided a good mix of practical and theoretical material, that they offered a stimulating venue for networking and problem-solving, and were (according to some) more useful than most library conferences when it came time to bring ideas home and put them into practice because our Institutes allowed for hands-on work on a single focus. Participants from all of the colleges involved-expanded from the original five colleges to include seven by the second Institute, thanks to strong lobbying by interested institutions-suggested that we continue holding similar Institutes in future, with costs to be covered by their institutional budgets. Though we have not yet made firm plans to do so, we felt that was a strong endorsement of the program and we may well sponsor future Institutes on our campus to continue the stimulating conversation.

One of the benefits of these Institutes was to reinvigorate our own Gustavus librarians in preparation for the intensive work we would be doing during the week-long summer workshops for faculty. Before-and-after reflections written by our librarians indicated that this was, indeed, a positive effect of both Institutes. Continuing these events would be an excellent means of providing continuing professional development to carry on the collaboration with faculty on our campus.

Summer Workshops for Faculty

The second piece of our program centered on developing a cadre of faculty interested in embedding research skills and processes more intentionally into their courses. We held two week-long summer workshops, inviting faculty to apply well in advance and selecting participants based on the quality of their applications and with an eye toward including faculty from across the curriculum and teaching at different levels, from first year to senior courses. Though it wasn't intentional, the group included a nice mix of new to senior faculty. The first summer workshop involved fourteen faculty and the second seventeen. Across the two summers, we also were able to create a "core" of involved faculty in several departments, particularly in history, English, communication studies, religion, and biology.

Design of the Workshops

Those faculty selected to participate were sent a packet of readings in advance, geared to the five workshop days. Each faculty member focused on designing or redesigning a course to embed research into it as a developmental process. The sessions covered understanding student problems, developing resources (print and electronic) for the courses under development, teaching students how to evaluate sources, creating good research assignments, sequencing activities to develop research skills, and assessing student learning. Each week ended with a discussion of wider issues. At the end of the first workshop, we discussed the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. At the end of the second, we discussed what role research played in the curriculum.

For both workshops, we invited speakers to contribute to the program. Tom Mann of the Library of Congress was very well received by participants in the first workshop. (Interestingly, a student who attended his presentation noted it two years later in a senior survey as an event that she found important in her development as a researcher.) For the second workshop we invited Bill DeJohn, Director of the MINTEX Library Information Network; he relayed afterward that it was particularly helpful for him to spend time discussing research with faculty in the disciplines, something he rarely has an opportunity to do. We also invited writing program directors from Willamette University and Carleton College to lead discussions on designing effective assignments and had faculty from our own campus present methods of sequencing assignments and assessment.

Response

The faculty involved in these workshops gave the experience high marks. We were most encouraged by the enthusiastic participation during each intensive week and by the evaluations they completed at the end. We have continued the discussion through a e-mail list and by means of occasional informal get-togethers. Two brown-bag lunch discussions, part of a faculty development series, were led by faculty participating in the workshops discussing how they embedded research into their courses. (These, incidentally, were organized by a participant independently of the project directors for this grant-evidence that faculty feel strong ownership of this project.) The last event funded by the grant was to invite faculty participants to bring a guest to a luncheon discussion of student research. This was an attempt to open up the discussion beyond those that participated. We also used it as a chance to assess the impact of the project campus-wide. We had heard, through earlier evaluations and reporting, that most, if not all, of the faculty ended up redesigning more than one course to include more research skills as an integral part of the syllabus. We were particularly interested to learn if there had been a wider effect on their departments and programs.

Though this appears to vary from one department to another, most faculty reported that their departments are having more discussion of how research should be taught in their curricula, spurred on by this project. In some departments, these discussions are formal and frequent. In others, it tends to be "in the halls and offices" as one faculty member said-not part of a formal meeting, but nevertheless being discussed and resulting in curricular change. The Biology department, for example, has developed segments of four core courses that each focuses on developing a different research-related skill. A faculty member reported that this made it possible for her to draw on and integrate all of those skills successfully in a higher level course. In the English department-which has little sequence in its curriculum, discussions are under way to develop a more effective senior capstone research experience. The fact that five of their faculty have been through our program gives them some common conceptual foundations to draw on for these discussions.

Interestingly, a review of data being gathered routinely by departments as part of ongoing assessment of academic programs suggest the academic departments place a high value on student research experiences as a key part of the curriculum; it also reveals that students and alumni report these experiences are a significant part of their education and contribute to life-long learning. Clearly, this is fruitful common ground on which to build even stronger library-faculty collaboration.

The library's traditional course-related instructional program has witnessed significant growth in the past two years, thanks largely to the intensive interactions with faculty afforded by the grant and the higher profile it has given the library and its instructional role. Last year, we taught a historic number of course-related instructional sessions in the library, and while the statistics for this year are incomplete, it appears we will top that number. One interesting effect of the workshops has been that faculty often schedule multiple sessions in the library, where one fifty-minute introductory session was the norm before. This reflects our belief that research is recursive and research skills must be developed over time.

Research and Assessment

The third part of our IMLS project involves assessing the impact of these activities on student learning and conducting further inquiry into how students learn research skills effectively. From what we can tell so far through before-and-after reflections, submitted before-and-after course materials, and interviews with faculty participants, many courses have undergone significant change as a result of the workshops. These include developing research skills through multiple assignments that build on one another developmentally, more attention being paid to the research process during assignment design and assessment, more sensitivity to student perspectives on research, and the development of assignments other than traditional papers that engage students in research. We hope to continue sharing ideas and teaching methods among faculty through formal and informal faculty development programs and documentation of effective practices on our Web site.

Two research projects are currently under way. One is the development of a rubric for assessing how well students understand various aspects of research based on their finished products. The idea is to look for evidence students understand not only how to find information, but how to put it to use effectively. Once developed and tested, this rubric may be used by libraries as a tool for assessing student learning as it relates to the library's goals. The second project is to replicate a study of student research processes conducted more than ten years ago and published in the Journal of Academic Librarianship to see how processes have changed and adapted to include the use of electronic resources. So far preliminary literature reviews have been conducted and research designs have been tested for both projects. A small grant has been obtained to pay student subjects for the second project. Both should be concluded within a year.

In addition to these projects, we hope to encourage participating faculty to share their ideas and experiences through publication. We have created a Web site that lists higher education journals that publish articles on pedagogy with links to instructions for authors. This has been shared on the BI-L discussion list and additional suggestions proposed by the list members will be added. This will be accessible both from the library's Web page and through the Web page of our Faculty Development program.

Dissemination

We have found many opportunities to share what we have learned though this project, and intend to continue the dialog. On campus, the project has been disseminated through connections to the Faculty Development program and by means of on-campus events such as a panel discussion of student research and brown bag lunches. We have also discovered that some departments have used the summer workshops as a springboard for departmental reflection on how research can be embedded in the curriculum.

Beyond our campus, we've found the affiliation of librarians from the seven liberal arts colleges involved in our Summer Institutes to be a fruitful community for sharing ideas and developing our programs through collaboration with similar libraries. We also described the program at an annual meeting of the Oberlin Group, an informal network of seventy-four liberal arts college library directors.

We have been able to formally disseminate our project's plan and results through conference papers, workshops, and publications. These are detailed in Appendix B of this report.

We also have put material on a Web site for the use of project participants and to share with the wider community. The URL has been shared through the BI-L discussion list and is listed at the Institute for Information Literacy's Web site as a selected case study. Additionally, what we learned through the project was helpful as Barbara Fister consulted with Diana Hacker and editors from Bedford/St. Martin's about revisions to several of their popular writing handbooks. The Bedford Handbook (6th edition, 20001), Research and Documentation in an Electronic Age (2nd edition, forthcoming) and A Writer's Reference (5th ed, forthcoming) have all had their research sections reviewed and revisions suggested based in part on what we learned through the IMLS project.

Next Steps

We were pleased by the enthusiastic response our programs received and are convinced there is momentum to continue developing collaborations started during this project. We have had the Librarians' Institute endorsed as an event the participating institutions would like to continue, even without grant funding. We will be in touch with those libraries to see what topics might be good ones for future events. We may want to involve faculty in the disciplines in a future institute along the model of the celebrated Earlham conferences of the past, providing a venue for faculty to develop connections among our campuses as well as the librarians. Another possible focus would be to hold an institute for librarians and writing program directors from our schools, with discussion of common issues and break-out sessions.

It is also clear to us that there is a great deal of interest among our faculty for additional opportunities for faculty development programs along the lines of our summer workshops. In fact, a number of faculty were disappointed to learn it wasn't going to be an annual event. We have two follow-up programs planned in the coming months and hope to add more as time goes on.

In January 2002, librarians will conduct a half-day workshop for faculty on plagiarism-how to detect it, how to help students understand the issues surrounding the ethical use of intellectual property, and how to create assignments that cannot be plagiarized. We are involving individuals from the Writing Program and the Advising Center in this effort as well as "graduates" of our summer workshops. We think this will be a chance to draw on a common concern to discuss wider issues related to student learning. We will also maintain a Web site on plagiarism developed for this event.
In June we have been invited to present a day-long session on introducing students to research as part of a three-day seminar to train faculty for our First Term Seminar program. The faculty member who organizes this training program attended our IMLS-funded faculty workshop and thought much of the material would be useful to First Term Seminar instructors so is willing to devote a significant amount of time to this part of the training.

Other faculty development ideas that we are considering include:

Conducting focused workshops for departments or divisions to develop ways of embedding research processes into their curriculum. There is, for example, particular interest among the science departments in involving students in research. Though only two science faculty participated in the summer workshops, an external review of our library's science collections has led to some fruitful discussions with the science departments that includes how to give their students a better grasp of scientific literature. This may be an opportune moment to build on those discussions.
Pulling out pieces of the week-long workshop that hold particular interest-evaluation of Web sites was one faculty suggestion-and developing a series of half-day workshops for those topics.
Finding ways to support and celebrate student research projects across campus. The new Dean of Faculty and Vice President of Academic Affairs at Gustavus is interested in making a greater cross-curricular effort in this arena. The Office of Institutional Research has also expressed an interest in mounting on the college Web site a database of student research projects that the library has maintained for several years. Providing models of research done by their peers may help make our students more aware of what they are capable of doing.
Piggy-backing on other initiatives to focus on developmental research skills. For example, the campus has a faculty development grant from the Bush Foundation that could provide funds for programming; there may be fruitful ways to help programs use their assessment processes leading up to an accreditation visit to develop ways of assessing and documenting the research components of their curricula; there may be opportunities to join with the Writing Program to provide more programming on research writing as a part of our Writing-Across-the-Curriculum efforts.

In the area of assessment and evaluation, we will be working on research started during the IMLS grant project and anticipate at least two articles to come out of these initiatives. We will be reworking our Web site to make it easier for visitors to find information about the project if they want to use it as a model for their institution. We will also be developing additional pages to highlight assignments and other materials developed by our faculty to develop effective research skills among our students. And as Gustavus prepares for an upcoming accreditation visit from the North Central Association, we will be applying what we have learned about student learning outcomes in evaluating our library's instructional program and what it contributes to student learning. Given the new stress on assessing student learning outcomes apparent in accreditation guidelines and in the new Standards for College Libraries, we may well be at the forefront of developing a model assessment program for academic libraries.

Conclusion

The library at Gustavus has had a strong instructional program for decades. A former library director described it as a "teaching library" in the early sixties, well before the concept of bibliographic instruction was well established. But in spite of our best intentions, we were not satisfied with what we were able to accomplish. Like other libraries, we were struggling to transform our program from an Earlham-model of course-related bibliographic instruction to a more holistic focus on information literacy involving faculty across the curriculum. The funding from the IMLS has been immensely useful to us in this process. We have been able to tie in the goals we had with this program with other campus and library initiatives. We expect the strong ties developed with faculty on our campus and among librarians in the region to continue and grow and hope this experience will fuel research and publication on the part of those involved. And finally, we have found high interest among other libraries in emulating what we've been able to accomplish here, making us hopeful this experience truly is providing a national model.

Appendix A: Colleges, Programs, and Courses Involved

Liberal Arts College Libraries involved in summer institutes

Augustana College (Rock Island, IL)
Carleton College (Northfield, MN)
College of St. Benedict and St. John's University (Collegeville, MN)
Concordia College (Morehead, MN)
Gustavus Adolphus College (St. Peter, MN)
Macalester College (St. Paul, MN)
St. Olaf College (Northfield, MN)

Department involvement in the summer workshops for faculty

Art and Art History (2 faculty)
Biology (2 faculty)
Communication Studies (3 faculty)
Economics and Management (2 faculty)
English (5 faculty; two of the redesigned courses were for Peace Studies and Environmental Studies programs)
Geography (1 faculty)
Health and Exercise Science (1 faculty)
History (4 faculty)
Interdisciplinary Studies (1 faculty)
Modern Foreign Languages (1 faculty; the course she redesigned is also part of the Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies program)
Music (1 faculty)
Nursing (2 faculty)
Political Science (1 faculty; the course he designed is cross listed with Environmental Studies)
Religion (3 faculty)
Scandinavian Studies (1 faculty)
Theatre/Dance (1 faculty)

Two thirds of Gustavus departments had faculty participate. We were able to achieve a balance of introductory, intermediate, and advanced course levels. We also-without consciously seeking it-had an interesting balance of new faculty and senior faculty.

Courses redesigned in response to the faculty workshops

American Environmental History
American Literature, I and II
Art Before Cortes
Creation and Genesis
Critical Thinking and Argument
Economic Development and World Resources
England, 1399-1688
Environmental Politics
Ethics and Medicine
Family Health
First Term Seminar: Ethnic Conflict in Europe-the Yugoslav Case
First Term Seminar: How Did I Get Here?
First Term Seminar: Scandinavia and the New Europe
First Term Seminar: The Power of Music
Freshwater Biology
History Seminar: Thinking Historically
Indigenous People Globally
Introduction to Peace Studies
Market Research
Medieval England
Nursing in Complex Systems
Paul: His Interpreters, His Critics
Plant Physiology
Public Speaking
Researching Lived Experience
Revolutionary America
Seminar in Health Education
Senior Seminar: W.B. Yeats
Spanish-American Culture
Studies in World Theatre, I and II
Sub-Saharan Africa
Twentieth-Century Art and Architecture
The Victorian Age
Women in the United States: Private Lives, Public Lives

In addition to these courses, faculty reported after the workshops that they were redesigning additional courses, including Art of Interpretation, Medieval Art, a course for Health Education majors on Technology, Teaching and Learning, International Relations, several introductory and intermediate Biology courses, a number of advanced Communication Studies courses, and First Term Seminars. Some faculty simply reported they were changing all of their courses as a result of the workshop.

Appendix B: Formal Dissemination

"Reintroducing Students to Good Research." Keynote address presented by Barbara Fister to the faculty of Lake Forest College, November 7, 2001. This address described the assumptions underlying our IMLS project and provided examples of creative research assignments developed by Gustavus faculty involved in the summer workshops.

"Information Literacy Pilot Project," Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota. Workshop presented by Barbara Fister and Molly Pederson for Concordia faculty on information literacy standards and assessment, May 2001. This workshop was designed to familiarize faculty across the disciplines with the concepts of information literacy, promote the design of effective assignments for developing research skills, and include information literacy in assessment of programs.

"From BI to IL: The Paths of Two Liberal Arts Colleges" coauthored with Elizabeth O. Hutchins and Kris Huber MacPherson. A contributed paper, presented at the ACRL National Conference in March 2001, published in Crossing the Divide: Proceedings of the Tenth National Conference of the Association of College and Research Libraries. Ed. Hugh Thompson. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries, 2001, 203-212. This paper lays out two approaches to developing information literacy programs through stronger collaboration with faculty and outlines the project supported by the IMLS. An article based on this paper will be published this spring in the Journal of Library Administration in a special issue devoted to information literacy programs. This issue of the journal will simultaneously be published as a monograph by Haworth Press .

"Information Literacy: Connecting Standards and Objectives to Programs and Curriculum: Case Studies of Early Implementers." Panel presentation at the Association of College and Research Libraries National Conference, March 2001. As a panelist, Barbara Fister described the IMLS project and discussed responses of Gustavus faculty to the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education .

December 2001
For more infomation, contact Barbara Fister