Presented at LILAC 2015

1. Peer to Peer:
Involving a student researcher to uncover
students’ real information seeking behaviours
Iain Baird, Academic Librarian
Ethan Lumb, Projects Assistant
Fran Porritt, Academic Librarian

2. Teesside University
• Main Campus in Middlesbrough and site at Darlington
• Post 92 University
• Five Schools: 20,104 students
• Queen’s Anniversary Prize 2013
• Times Higher Education University of the Year 2009/2010
• Vision: Providing Opportunities, Driving Enterprise, Delivering
Excellence
• Goal: To educate our students in their chosen discipline to
become confident, critical, creative, adaptable, articulate and
aspiring.

3. Student as Researcher Project

4. ANCIL
Secker, J. and Coonan, E. (2011). A new curriculum for information literacy. Available at:
https://newcurriculum.wordpress.com/ (Accessed: 10 November 2014).

5. 1. Transition to H.E.
“The last time I wrote proper academic text was year 9.
So I did find it really hard, and I’m still struggling. I
have had a little bit of help off my tutors…but I
haven’t really sought any help from anyone, cos it’s
just when you’re trying to juggle so much, trying to
sit down and arrange an appointment to see
someone is just not do-able.” (Participant 10)

6. 2. Becoming an independent learner
“And they think that university should be autonomous,
people should work on their own. Not so much like
school children being told by their teacher what to do.
And it is hard when you don’t know what they expect,
so you don’t know if you are doing the right thing or
not. And I have emailed a few times and said look can
you just tell me what you want me to put in this
assignment so that I can do it properly.” (Participant
10)

7. 3. Developing academic literacies
“I knew I was capable of doing the art side of things
basically, but when it came to the module that required
a lot of structure and a lot more writing than any of the
others actually produce reports and stuff like that
because I knew it was outside my skills set it ended up
just like being a case of I really don’t want to start this
because when I do it is going to be terrible it is going to
actually be challenging.” (Participant 3)

8. 4. Mapping & evaluating the
information landscape
“Then I read the …. abstract, then I go and read the last
couple of paragraphs of the conclusion and if I’m still
interested, with some names that I’ve not heard or not
come across before, I’ll type them into Google,
research them to see whether, what they’ve done, to
see if this is the only publication they’ve done on this
topic, then is it as reliable as somebody who’s spent 30
years researching” (Participant 1)

9. 5. Resource Discovery in your Discipline
“I just had a little mooch…because when we came to
do the workshops in the library about finding journals
in different ways, I already had an idea of where things
were, so it was a lot easier.” (Participant 1)
“That’s what I’ve always liked about graphic design,
because the teachers aren’t really teachers; they’re just
designers that tutor you” (Participant 9)

10. 6. Managing information
“It took me to half way through the third year to realise
there was such a thing as RefWorks as no one told me
about that before which I was a bit gutted about. Hours
spent referencing work when actually it could have all
been done for you.” (Participant 2)
“I've learned how to take effective notes and how to
structure it properly and how to accurately proofread
my work by reading it out to myself and that helps.”
(Participant 8)

11. 6. Managing information

12. 7. Ethical dimension of information
“I mean I can honestly say I have never even
contemplated plagiarising, I will reference an “and” just
to be on the safe side! … There was an incident …a
certain person forged all their results for their
dissertation and made up participants...it angers me
that people think they can get away with that, when
other people have tried so hard to produce an honest
piece of work.” (Participant 2)

13. 8. Presenting & communicating knowledge
“I tend to only struggle when I have to write in
different tenses. Which sounds really simple but like we
had to write lab reports up, and you can’t say ‘I did this,
I did that’, you have got to say ‘it was done’ but if you
say it was done in a certain way then it doesn’t count
as writing it in the correct tense. So it’s really difficult
to get it written down in the correct way.”
(Participant 7)

14. 9. Synthesis and creating new knowledge
“You go back and forth through idea, processing and
research. ..So as long as I’d keep the research going,
then I’d do some designs then if I got stuck with designs
I’d sort of go back to research and look at other
people’s work and just get a feel of the standard.”
(Participant 9)

15. 10. Social dimension of information
“…because the whole thing about being in the game
industry is working in groups to make sure everyone’s
working together because if you can’t do that you’re
not going to get a job in the game industry so even
though this one assignment was really tough on my
group skills, I will try and progress it because otherwise
I won’t get anywhere within the industry … so
everything from that group will be a thing of what not
to do. Help me get through life.” (Participant 4)

16. Impact and Implications
• Learning Hub and Succeed@Tees Workshops
• PASS and value of peer support
• Digital Literacy
• Focus on academic staff?
• Audit of information literacy provision using
ANCIL: identifying gaps
• Follow up interviews with participants

17. Questions/Discussion
Iain Baird (i.baird@tees.ac.uk)
Fran Porritt (f.porritt@tees.ac.uk)