Sense-Making and the Community College Student

A qualitative pilot study is underway at Queensborough Community College - The City University of New York to explore the information behaviors of community college students in the context of an assigned research task. Two research questions are addressed: RQ1: How do community college students make sense of research assignments?; RQ2: What role does the academic library play in community college students’ sense-making processes? This project is framed using Dervin’s Sense-Making Theory of Information Behavior (Dervin, 1998). Community college students are interviewed and asked to reconstruct their experience in the completion of a research assignment. Per Dervin’s model, the assignment is conceived as a time-space journey, and the journey is comprised of a series of student-conceptualized situations and gaps, bridges and outcomes. Data is collected using Sense-Making’s micro moment time-line interview technique (Dervin, 1983) and analyzed using a grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2006). This study hopes to expand human information behavior and user study literature with a focus on the community college student; it will also close a methodological gap in the community college scholarship with a Sense-Making approach to data collection. Pilot findings may offer insights into the refinement of academic library sources and services, which could contribute to community college student achievement, and may be used to launch a larger mixed-methods inquiry regarding this user population. The poster will discuss research study methodology and data collection, as well as present preliminary findings and interview themes

Next Level Learning: Using Pedagogically-Designed Research Guides in Information Literacy Instruction

A pilot study is currently underway at Queensborough Community College which explores the impact of a pedagogically-designed research guide (PDRG) on information literacy student learning outcomes. In contrast to pathfinder guides, the PDRG seeks to engage and support students through all steps of the research assignment. Each guide tab corresponds to a stage in Kuhlthau’s Model of the Information Search Process and includes both a micro-lecture and a quiz. The poster will discuss the creation and Spring 2018 launch of the PDRG. Poster visual aids will incorporate graphic presentation of the micro-lectures and quizzes, as well as preliminary quiz results. Micro-lecture videos will be available for viewing and their production discussed

Community College Librarians and the ACRL Framework: Findings from a National Study

This study explored community college librarians’ engagement with the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. A national online survey with 1,201 community college librarian respondents reveals limited familiarity with and integration of the Framework into community college instruction to date. Findings indicate an openness to future adoption, as well as substantial interest in targeted professional development and a version of the Framework adapted for community college campuses. These results contribute benchmark instructional data on an understudied section of academic librarianship and add to the growing body of research on how librarians have updated teaching practices in response to the Framework