International Perspectives on Improving Student Engagement: Advances in Library Practices in Higher Education: Volume 26

We are living in an electronic age, where everything that we want to know or are curious about is increasingly facilitated by the internet and search engines. Now, much of the world’s knowledge is at our fingertips. Students have unlimited access to information in the form of e-books, journals and other open sources. The value of a physical repository of knowledge is diminishing and the printing of material is becoming less compelling. It has been noted that college students spend as much time on the internet as they do while studying (Jones, 2002). The most pertinent question is whether the library is still considered an important source of information to students? Can we imagine a university without a library with just computers and a server room? The information highway is posing new challenges that the librarians have to deal with (Dunn, 2002; Rockman & Smith, 2002). In the past, gatekeepers like the librarian decided what a student should read, depending on their level of study and their comprehension power. The picture has altered and now students decide what exactly they should read with the click of their computers. Leaders in higher education institutions are skeptical as to how much they should actually invest in buying books, how many shelves to create to stack them and whether the collection of books is going to be an indicator of the academic quality of that institution. This book talks about a vital subject as to how much and in what ways a library can engage a student to create information literacy. Various interventions have been discussed as case studies in colleges and universities from Canada to India. Student-centered workshops have been designed along with university partnerships with a writing center as well as the role of a library as a source of socio-economic transformation in Africa. The experiences shared by the authors in this book will be a valuable resource for librarians across the world as they increase their collaborative efforts to promote the value of information literacy for students.

As libraries evolve, they accommodate and refine their services to support the varied institutional, student and faculty, and course needs, including developing workshops tailored to course requirements or that provide students and faculty with additional skills that promote their academic pursuits. Some services provided by academic libraries reflect strategic choices that promote the increased alignment of the users’ needs with the institution’s needs. Some needs anticipated and observed by many research-intensive institutions are data literacy, research, and software skills. This chapter describes the case of the academic library at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), an R1 research institution, which offered the Data Workshop Series (DWS) to help prepare students, faculty, and staff to clean, manipulate, analyze, and visualize research data. This applied, student-centered technical workshop series was guided by authentic assessment, specifically performance tasks, which were employed to ensure the participants’ engagement and comprehension of the applied techniques presented. The performance tasks also helped participants gain confidence in their data skills. From them, the participants learned that they can use the software and solve questions on their own. When reflecting on what they learned in the DWS, participants stated that they could develop their skills on their own with additional practice and that they plan on integrating the software into their academic work. By offering the DWS, UNLV Libraries has taken a step toward being part of the life of the user, a partner in more than information findings, but in knowledge creation.

Research and writing can be challenging tasks for undergraduate students, and evaluating online sources for use in papers can be especially difficult to do well. This chapter discusses a partnership between a library and a writing center to teach writing consultants the basics of the Information Literacy Framework and online source evaluation. This included providing additional education for peer writing consultants. Consultants became more fluent in the aspects of evaluation and provided perspective on how and why undergraduate students struggle with this in the research and writing process, establishing the value of assembling networked pedagogical models for teaching information literacy.

The call for value addition to library products and services has tremendously increased over the years worldwide. In Zimbabwe, that call has also been echoed in various forums and in support of that, the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (ZimAsset) pointed out the importance of value addition. The education sector has not been spared as it is responsible for producing graduates who feed into the labor market. This chapter seeks to explore how the libraries in institutions of higher learning have added value to education in support of the research, teaching, learning and community activities that are undertaken in higher education. A case study of Bindura University of Science Education (BUSE) Library was done. A qualitative study using interviews was carried out and content analysis was used to analyze the data. It was discovered that BUSE Library plays a pivotal role in adding value to the learning, teaching, research and community activities that take place in institutions of higher learning. The author recommends that libraries should move along with technological changes that are taking place so as to remain relevant in adding value to institutions of higher learning. It is also important to continue building the capacity of librarians in higher education institutions to ensure that they continue to add value in academic institutions.

A common way for academic libraries to support student success is through partnership with writing centers. Practices such as applying service design thinking to develop and inform integrated library and writing center services can lead to a student-focused space. This chapter outlines how service design, studio pedagogy, and peer learning informed the setup and ongoing services in The Undergrad Research and Writing Studio (URWS or, the Studio), a shared space in the Oregon State University Libraries. The URWS model is grounded in studio pedagogy, which employs a “propose-critique-iterate” approach to student writing development (Brocato, 2009). Research and writing consultants assist student writers when they have a question, mirroring libraries’ point of need service approach. Librarians and studio faculty collaborated on the training curriculum, which emphasizes how research and writing are intertwined processes. Peer consultant reflection and assessment inform the ongoing development of the overarching program, service, space, and training, ensuring alignment with the ethos of centering students and their learning.

The present study aims to assess the enrollment scenario of Library and Information Science (LIS) education across different states in India. The study is purely based on the secondary data collected and compiled by the Ministry of Human Resource and Development, Govt. of India under All India Survey of Higher Education (AISHE). The data were retrieved from the official website of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Govt. of India, for the period from 2011–2012 to 2017–2018. From the data analysis, it emerged that of the 36 states and union territories in India, LIS education is being imparted across 32 states and union territories, accounting nearly 90% states of the country. Tamil Nadu is the leading state in India, producing nearly one-fourth of Library Science graduates each year. The male–female enrollment at the national level stands in the ratio of 48:52 students, respectively. Of the total enrollments made during the period of study, 96% students enrolled in Nagaland were male, while nearly 72% students enrolled in Goa were females. These and many more related aspects of LIS education in India have been discussed in detail.

Due to the development of Information and Communication Technologies, the scenario has changed in modern library services such as access to electronic or digital collections, web portals, personalized services, online library instruction, e-reference service, online document delivery, helpdesk services and electronic publishing. Today many university libraries in India offer electronic information resources to their users in order to satisfy their information needs. Managing the development and delivery of electronic library services is one of the major challenges for these libraries. The University libraries in Odisha state which is situated at the eastern part of India gradually transformed their traditional library services to e-services. Thus, it is important to understand and conceptualize library service quality in the web-based service environment and how it can be accessed. In this chapter, E-S-QUAL model is adopted to identify the criteria to assess the service quality of library website of Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (SOA) University located in Bhubaneswar city of Odisha from the research scholars’ viewpoints. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of E-S-QUAL dimensions such as efficiency, system availability, fulfillment and privacy on user’s perceived value, e-service quality and e-loyalty that influence the digital library services. With an empirical data set including 350 valid questionnaires collected through online survey from the research scholars of SOA community, the result provides a foundation for better understanding research scholars’ perceptions on e-service quality for libraries. This information is also useful to universities’ libraries website designers and service providers and in the management of web-based services.

Information literacy instruction in higher education tends to focus on a relatively small slice of the information literacy landscape: academic research skills. Students often fail to see the relevance of these sessions beyond the direct application to their assignments. In addition, while this type of instruction helps students succeed academically, it does not necessarily prepare them for their future careers, which can lead to a lapse in student engagement. A prior exploratory survey study among alumni of four bachelor of nursing programs provided insight into current information practices of professional nurses and how librarians could have better prepared them for their eventual workplace. This chapter outlines how this evidence informed a change in information instruction, now preparing nursing students for professional as well as academic success. This evidence-based approach has the potential benefit of making instruction more relevant and engaging to students, while at the same time expanding their information literacy skills. Teaching nursing students professional information literacy skills, in addition to academic information literacy skills, leads to better-prepared nurses which ultimately benefits their patients. The chapter provides several implementation examples but also addresses the challenges that librarians face when pursuing evidence-based practice to increase student engagement.

In 2015, a librarian (Jessica Blackwell) and a course instructor (Trevor Holmes) collaborated to offer experiential opportunities in the archive itself for a large introductory Women’s Studies class. Since then, students from six semesters of the course have worked with primary source materials from the library’s collections. This chapter is a description of practice rather than a formal study. The authors describe design elements from the course, public products of the assignment, and reflections based on observations over time, offering several ways for librarians with access to archival material to co-design assignments with instructors. In the assignment variations, students visit the archive to complete a short transcription or digitization task pre-selected to benefit both the learners’ research skills development and the wider research community. Final products go live online, benefiting the students and the global research community. Then, students link the experience to a course reading in a critically reflective paper. While initially the projects hold barriers for students, in formal and informal reflections they ultimately find it to be a rewarding learning experience. The authors contend that the assignment has significant elements of experiential learning and high-impact practices.

Situated within the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada, the Chapman Learning Commons (CLC) has been offering academic transition and learning support programs targeted to first year students since 2002. A recent addition to our suite of services is the Profs-in-Commons program which invites faculty members to conduct their office hours and host events in the CLC. The program has been an important initiative for the Learning Commons and the UBC campus community because it encourages student–faculty interaction outside of the classroom; it increases student’s attendance in course-based office hours – hosted by faculty members and it leverages the status of libraries as neutral, collaborative, and community-oriented learning spaces. The program is grounded in student engagement research consistently showing that students’ transition to university is greatly enhanced when they foster academic connections with faculty members. Profs-in-Commons also responds to research into best practices for how to support student transition to university academic environments. This chapter will elaborate on the theoretical foundations of the Profs-in-Commons program, share how the UBC-Vancouver Profs-in-Commons program was initiated and is sustained, and discuss the program’s benefits and challenges.

Although a great deal has been written about the challenges and opportunities for collaboration between librarians and professors in higher education, most recommendations for faculty–library collaboration are written by librarians, published in librarian-oriented venues, and rely on second-hand accounts of professorial perceptions and experiences. Dialogue between librarians and professors is missing. In this chapter, the authors present a duoethnographic inquiry into a librarian–professor collaboration: the authors collaboratively examine their four years working together on the senior seminar course “Small Business Management” at Acadia University, Canada. In considering the evolution of their course and their collaboration, the authors reflect on six dimensions of their experiences: the way their collaboration has shaped the course learning outcomes, the value the authors have derived from collaboratively reflexive teaching, the workload tensions the authors have navigated, the challenge of “fitting in,” and the role of library champion. The authors then conclude with four insights from their professorial–librarian collaboration that might be transferable to other contexts of higher education: the importance of openness, collegiality, time for collaboration, and attention to the cultural gaps between professorship and librarianship.