Each September and April the University accepts new cohorts of health students. They have a 2 week skills module at the very beginning of their course during which they have several library activities scheduled in their timetable. As part of the module content and for a formative assessment they have to carry out a search on a topic given to them by their tutor. They are expected to find a couple of books; journal articles and websites on their topic and explain how they found the sources. At present their timetable of library activities looks like this:
Week 1:
Monday – Core lecture about ‘Finding information’ – 1 hour (compulsory)
Tuesday – Orientation to the library physical space – 1 hour (compulsory for 1st half of cohort)
Wednesday – Library workshop 1 ‘Library catalogue and introduction to e-Library’ – 1 hour (not compulsory but strongly encouraged by tutors to attend/shown on central timetable)
Thursday – Orientation to the library physical space – 1 hour (compulsory for 2nd half of cohort)
Friday - Library workshop 2 ‘Finding health information resources’ – 1.5 hours (not compulsory but strongly encouraged by tutors to attend/shown on central timetable)
Week 2:
Wednesday: Repeats of library workshop 2
Friday: Repeats of library workshop 1 and 2
As expected, there is good attendance for the lecture and orientation activities. The optional workshops have ok levels of attendance but certainly do not cover the whole cohort (Total students numbers are Sept = 380 students and April = 110 / students are from a range of health areas and are mixed together).
Why are the workshops non-compulsory? Several reasons, firstly (and quite wrongly) because there are not enough members of library staff to run the number of workshops required to accommodate the large cohorts in the two week module (plus lots of other students also start at the same time). Secondly, some students will ‘get’ searching from the off and will possibly have done a degree previously therefore both library and academic staff felt it was a little harsh to make them go right back to the beginning.
Overall the timetable and activities work well. The workshops were started by a previous librarian and have been built on and modified over the years. I get the students to evaluate the library workshops and feedback has been consistently positive for many years – something I am very proud of.
However, it has emerged that the start date of the module has shifted to a quieter time of the term and with the changes to higher education it has meant a modest reduction in student numbers for 2012/13. This has made me think that I can offer compulsory workshops to all the new students rather than optional ones. I’ve been musing over this for a while. I can offer compulsory library workshops but I can only provide workshops that are 1 hour long rather than the combined offer of 2.5 hours when they were non-compulsory workshops. I’m worried that this is wrong – am I better off embedding the short library workshops or persevering with the positively received 2.5 hour offer of non-compulsory workshops? Here’s how I envisage the possible timetable of library activities:
Week 1:
Monday – Core lecture about ‘Finding information’ – 1 hour (compulsory)
Tuesday – Orientation to the library physical space – 1 hour (compulsory for 1st half of cohort)
Thursday – Orientation to the library physical space – 1 hour (compulsory for 2nd half of cohort)
Week 2:
Tuesday – Library workshop ‘Using the e-Library to find journal articles’ – 1 hour (can run 6 one hour workshops covering 10 personal tutor groups)
Thursday - Library workshop ‘Using the e-Library to find journal articles’ – 1 hour (can run 6 one hour workshops covering 10 personal tutor groups)
Pros
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Comments
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All students have equal access to workshop
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Gives parity across the different pathways of the programme
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No sign up required
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No wikis, paper forms, extra notices needed
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Less confusing for students/staff if workshops are timetabled centrally
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All in place before start of term, academic staff can request large IT rooms.
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Embedded into their timetable – no longer an add on
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Eureka!
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Content can be more closely tailored to their area of health
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Can introduce them to their key resources rather than ones which cover a spectrum of health topics
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Opportunity to meet the librarian on 3 possible occasions rather than one
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I can’t do all the sessions but I can do most of them
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Can rejig lecture and tour to accommodate some items that were previously delivered in the workshops
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Revitalise lecture and tweak orientation activity
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Cons
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Time to cover e-library only in workshop whereas we used to cover evaluating websites and the catalogue
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But can move these items to lecture and orientation activity. New VLE gives scope for video content.
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Complicated timetabling
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But probably worth the agony
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Some current workshop evaluation forms say they ‘want more time to practice’
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However they can log in at any time and keep practising using the worksheets/VLE information
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Is second Thursday too late in module?
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Needs discussion with academic staff
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I think I may have made my decision simply by writing it all down for this post - it helps to see it set out.
