Thanks to Lyn Parker for alerting me to this.
There is a project gaining momentum in the USA, in particular to research undergraduate's students' information behaviour when carrying out assignments. The website at http://www.infolitproject.org/ says that "Ohio State University, Sonoma State University, City College of San Francisco, and University of Southern California have expressed interest in participating in the study." One study has already been undertaken at Saint Mary’s College of California. This project explored the following research questions through focus groups, analysis of student assignments and questionnaire:
"1: How do students, majoring in lower division Humanities or Social Sciences courses, conceptualize the course-related task of research and operationalize these concepts into research activities that are assigned by faculty in courses they are teaching? When a professor assigns a project, requiring research, what does this learning task involve, from students’ points of view?
"2: What information resources do students majoring in Humanities and Social Sciences turn to and use to carry out course-related research? Where does the search for research materials start, where does it end, and why? How do lower division students in Humanities and Social Sciences ultimately select research sources for course-related work and how do they determine “quality” resources vs. “non-quality” resources?
"3: What challenges, barriers, and obstacles exist for students conducting research in the Humanities and social sciences fields?" (Report is at http://library.stmarys-ca.edu/features/SMCInfoLit.pdf )
There is a project gaining momentum in the USA, in particular to research undergraduate's students' information behaviour when carrying out assignments. The website at http://www.infolitproject.org/ says that "Ohio State University, Sonoma State University, City College of San Francisco, and University of Southern California have expressed interest in participating in the study." One study has already been undertaken at Saint Mary’s College of California. This project explored the following research questions through focus groups, analysis of student assignments and questionnaire:
"1: How do students, majoring in lower division Humanities or Social Sciences courses, conceptualize the course-related task of research and operationalize these concepts into research activities that are assigned by faculty in courses they are teaching? When a professor assigns a project, requiring research, what does this learning task involve, from students’ points of view?
"2: What information resources do students majoring in Humanities and Social Sciences turn to and use to carry out course-related research? Where does the search for research materials start, where does it end, and why? How do lower division students in Humanities and Social Sciences ultimately select research sources for course-related work and how do they determine “quality” resources vs. “non-quality” resources?
"3: What challenges, barriers, and obstacles exist for students conducting research in the Humanities and social sciences fields?" (Report is at http://library.stmarys-ca.edu/features/SMCInfoLit.pdf )
Photo by Sheila Webber: top of the Martello Tower (James Joyce Museum) Sandycove, February 2008.
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