Library resources, student success and the distance-learning university

Purpose - Research at the Open University Library Services has been investigating the relationshipbetween access to online library resources and student success to help to understand whether there is asimilar relationship at a distance-learning university to that found in other institutions. Design/methodology/approach - A small library data project was established to investigate this area.The study analysed online library resource data from access logs from the EZproxy and OpenAthens systems. A data set of 1.7 million online resource accesses was combined with student success data for around 90,000 undergraduate students and a series of analyses undertaken.Findings The study found a pattern where students who are more successful are accessing more library resources. A chi-square test indicated a statistically significant association between library resource accesses and module result, while an ANOVA test suggests a medium sized effect. The study also found that 152 (76%) of 199 modules had a small, medium or large positive correlation between student success, measured by the overall assessment score, and online library resource accesses.Originality/value - This study builds on evidence that there is a relationship between library use and student success by showing that this relationship extends to the setting of a non-traditional, innovative library service supporting part-time distance learners

Designing Engagement for Academic Libraries

This article discusses ways to engage library users and non-users, from small tweaks to large-scale efforts. The librarian authors share their successes and lessons learned. Topics covered include library events, workshops, and passive programming. The benefits of making changes include fostering relationships and encouraging participation among library visitors to educate, entertain, and include

Information Transfer in Articles about Libraries and Student Success

Accepted manuscript version.Connecting academic libraries to the higher education environment is crucial for demonstrating the impact of libraries on student success. The purpose of this study is to examine the information transfer between the disciplines of library and information science (LIS) and higher education in order to evaluate the influence of ideas between the two disciplines. The methods of information transfer were analyzed in 39 articles focused on the library’s contributions to student success by examining the cited references, the author and collaborator affiliations, and the forward citations. The findings from the cited reference analysis suggest that LIS is borrowing concepts and methods through citations from the discipline of education. Authorship affiliations showed that some non-LIS authors are publishing in the field of LIS and that LIS authors are collaborating with non-LIS authors. Finally, based on the forward citations, other disciplines are rarely citing LIS research about student success. This article’s findings highlight the need to consider research and collaborators outside of the LIS field when researching the library’s contribution to student success

Factors affecting academic performance of undergraduate students: special reference to Faculty of Management and Commerce, South Eastern University of Sri Lanka

Abstract This study was designed to investigate the factors affecting on academic performance of undergraduate students with special reference to Faculty of Management and Commerce (FMC), South Eastern University of Sri Lanka (SEUSL). Data were collected from 120 respondents of FMC, SEUSL by using the simple random sampling method. The findings revealed that the existence of a significant relationship between English language proficiency, library facility utilization, computer laboratory utilization, lecture attendance and participation in extra activities and academic performance of undergraduate students. This research also confirmed that the most influencing factors for improving academic performance of the student is the English language proficiency (ELP) and academic performance will decrease when students participate in extra activities. Hence, the university has to make facility enhancement with regard to English language, library facility, computer laboratory and improve the attendance of the undergraduates for increasing the academic performance

Academic Libraries and Student Retention: The Implications for Higher Education

Grand Valley State University (GVSU) in Allendale, Michigan, has found a statistically significant correlation between library instruction and student retention, and also between faculty who invite library instruction and student retention. By putting these findings into the context of both existing literature on the relationship between library use and student success and of established models of effective higher education practices that contribute to student success, a line begins to form between intentional engagement with the library and high-impact practices

Understanding patterns of library use among undergraduate students from different disciplines

Objective The objective of this study was to test whether routinely-generated library usage data could be linked with information about students to understand patterns of library use among students from different disciplines at the University of Huddersfield. This information is important for librarians seeking to demonstrate the value of the library, and to ensure that they are providing services which meet user needs. The study seeks to join two strands of library user research which until now have been kept rather separate – an interest in disciplinary differences in usage, and a methodology which involves large-scale routinely-generated data. Methods The study uses anonymised data about individual students derived from two sources: routinely-generated data on various dimensions of physical and electronic library resource usage, and information from the student registry on the course studied by each student. Courses were aggregated at a subject and then disciplinary level. Kruskal-Wallis and Mann Whitney tests were used to identify statistically significant differences between the high-level disciplinary groups, and within each disciplinary group at the subject level. Results The study identifies a number of statistically significant differences on various dimensions of usage between both high-level disciplinary groupings and lower subject-level groupings. In some cases, differences are not the same as those observed in earlier studies, reflecting distinctive usage patterns and differences in the way that disciplines or subjects are defined and organised. Arts students at Huddersfield use library resources less than those in social science disciplines, contradicting findings from studies at other institutions, although music students are high users within the arts subject-level grouping. Computing and engineering students were relatively similar, although computing students were more likely to download PDFs, and engineering students were more likely to use the physical library. Conclusions The technique introduced in this study represents an effective way of understanding distinctive usage patterns at an individual institution. There may be potential to aggregate findings across several institutions to help universities benchmark their own performance and usage; this would require a degree of collaboration and standardisation. This study found that students in certain disciplines at Huddersfield use the library in different ways to students in those same disciplines at other institutions: further investigation is needed to understand exactly why these differences exist, but some hypotheses are offered

A cross-sectional comparative study to determine the factors contributing to the academic performance of the high performers and low performers in 2nd year medical students

Background: MBBS course content is extensive and requires immense and strenuous effort on the part of the medical students to complete it. Some students excel in their academics while others strive to pass and some even drop out. If the factors contributing to the excellent academic performance could be identified, these factors then can be incorporated to upgrade the struggling medical students. Hence, early identification of low achievers and the factors responsible for their poor performance is crucial. We undertook this study to identify the various factors influencing the academic performance of these two groups of students.Methods: We identified the top thirty percentile and bottom 30 percentile students in the subject of pharmacology based on their third semester examination marks. All the 62 students opted to participate in the study, and their informed consent was taken. They were then given the questionnaire and allowed to answer in a stress free atmosphere.Results: Factors which were statistically significant in contributing to the good performance of high achievers were the use of reference books from the library, learning from other sources such as patients, avoiding repetition of mistakes made in the past, proper time management skills, and having immense intrinsic motivation to study.Conclusion: Through our study, we identified important factors contributing to high performance in academics, and we concluded that students should incorporate all the factors in a well-coordinated manner rather than focusing on any single factor. If executed, appropriately it will definitely upgrade their academic performance and prevent undesirable failures

The Undergrad and the digital library: New challenges, new service models

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The impact of library instruction on undergraduate student success: A four-year study

Presentation at the 2018 Texas Library Association. This presentation reflects on a four-year study of data from a freshman level English composition course to examine possible correlations between participation in a library instruction session and student success

Library Usage, Instruction, and Student Success across Disciplines: A Multilevel Model Approach

To better understand the library’s role in student success, this research used student survey data to explore students’ reported library building use, library resource use, library instruction, as well as student perceptions of the library’s role in their success, and how these factors may vary by academic discipline. Cumulative GPAs were also matched with respondents. Quantifying the relationship between library usage and student success is one of the six areas recommended for further research by ACRL. This study focuses on the variation and the uncertainty of the measurement of this relationship across disciplines, using Bayesian multilevel regression methods. Levels of library resource usage and percentages of respondents believing the library contributes very much to the respondents’ academic success vary quite a bit by discipline. In this study, cumulative GPA is higher on average for students who use library resources more frequently, but not for students who receive library instruction. Although, for undergraduates, higher frequency of building usage predicted higher probability of believing the library contributes very much to academic success, it did not predict higher GPA