Re(Create)ing Credible Authority and “Teacherly Ethos”: Measuring the Effect of Library Instruction on Engineering Students’ Research Papers

In a previous job as an instruction librarian at an engineering school, I styled the knowledge I was peddling as an essential component of a larger project. Engineering design projects are often broken down into subsystems, which are then distributed amongst the individuals on the design team. What is my subsystem? Many instruction requests from disciplinary faculty come in the form of “please show the students how to use the databases.” Information in, performance out: if the students know about the databases and understand how to use them, they will automatically always go to them first when they need information . . . right? Well, not necessarily. As any good educator knows, instruction is not simply something you “plug in” to students to make them behave differently.

This paper does not report on actual measurements but reflects on the process of measuring in the context of the study I am conducting. In the fall of 2015, I set out to investigate whether information literacy instruction—and its mode and quantity—makes a difference in the quality of students’ researched argument papers. My research addressed the following questions:

Does information literacy instruction by a librarian improve the quality and use of citations in engineering student research papers? Is one long instruction session more effective than several short sessions, or vice versa?

Trying to produce results that would be compelling to the engineers in upper administration, I chose to analyze my data using InfoSEAD, a rubric developed by library and education faculty at Purdue University. The analysis process quickly generated many questions, and this paper aims to explore some of them.

Background/Problem

A recent survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers confirms the generally acknowledged idea that recent graduates in engineering and other fields possess less than optimal workplace communication skills, including researched writing (36). Disciplinary faculty often complain to instruction librarians about students who “run to Google for the answers to everything.” In an example of the real-world repercussions of this tendency, employers of Colorado School of Mines (CSM) graduates were asked to compare these students against graduates of other undergraduate engineering programs. As reported by Kay Schneider in “What Do Employers Say About Mines Graduates?” about the criterion “Finding and Using Information Effectively” and asked to choose between ratings of “Very Well Prepared,” “Well Prepared,” “Not Well Prepared,” and “No Opportunity to Observe,” 57% of employers reported that CSM students are “Very Well Prepared.” On the same skills, 27% of respondents reported they are “Well-prepared,” and 1% “Not Well Prepared” (the other 15% reported they “Had no opportunity to observe—yikes!). Similarly, while a 2009 Association of American Colleges and Universities survey indicated that 81% of employers think students should develop the skills to research questions in their field and develop evidence-based analysis (9), a 2012 Project Information Literacy survey of employers suggested that the research skills possessed by recent graduates are not as expected or desired (3). Clearly, college graduates would be well-served by better writing skills, particularly in the area of researched writing. How might this be accomplished? A recent study conducted by Char Booth and her colleagues examining librarian course collaboration shows that one way to address this problem is through information literacy instruction at the undergraduate level--specifically, more of it and of better quality (623).

Information literacy is defined by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) as the recognition that one needs information and the knowledge of how to find it, evaluate it, and use it effectively and ethically. The Information Literacy Standards, established by ACRL in 2000, formulate that information literate students can

1. 1. Determine the extent of information needed;

2. 2. Access the needed information effectively and efficiently;

3. 3. Evaluate information and its sources critically;

4. 4. Use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose;

5. 5. Understand the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information, and accesses and uses information ethically and legally.

In 2014, an ACRL working group presented in draft form a replacement/ update to these standards. Called...