Success in the Sciences: A Collaboration with Faculty

This year has seen a surge in cooperation between faculty and librarians which extends to many areas of the sciences and includes many levels of involvement on the part of librarians. Two of these endeavours, profiled below, targeted two very different student groups.

Skills Development Course for Science Students at Risk

The first group consisted of science students experiencing transitional difficulties, and who are at risk of failing to attain the minimum GPA standing required to pass into their next year. Their instructors wanted to offer additional support to reduce the obstacles for these students. Looking to a model that has been successfully implemented by the Faculty of Arts, Rob Kenedy (Professor and Academic Advisor at Bethune College) was approached to design a skills development course for at risk science students. The result is a non-credit course called Success in the Sciences which is mandatory for students at risk who wish to continue with their studies in the sciences at York. It includes instruction in writing in a variety of scientific formats, note-taking, developing study skills (including critical reading and thinking skills), stress management, preparing for exams and a library component.

Ilo-Katryn Maimets (Science Librarian for Nursing and Kinesiology) was contacted to provide a library research workshop for searching the science literature. The session focused on a major research assignment revolving around the question: "Do the media accurately report the results of scientific research?" Students were required to find three media articles that reported scientific research, match them to the original research articles that they were citing, and write a paper about the tendency of media to sensationalize (or not) the findings of scientific research based on these articles. Students were taught the basics of conducting searches in several databases, understanding the differences between media articles and peer reviewed articles, and making comparisons based on content.

One very positive result of this workshop has been that students are coming to the library to follow up on their assignments, asking for additional assistance and approaching library staff for further instruction. Recommendations for next year are that the library component be introduced at the start of the course, and that it be designed to provide a broader skill set to the students that can ultimately be applied to a broader range of courses and assignments.

Collaborative Nursing: Library Orientation and Research Skills

The second group was composed of nursing students from the Collaborative Nursing Program who are admitted to York in their third year of study after successfully completing the first two years of a nursing program at the college level. It is critical for nurses to locate and apply evidence-based information on an ongoing basis - to keep informed of developments, standards, codes of ethics and practice procedures. They must be able to locate synthesize and apply information, effectively in their daily work.

Before the start of fall classes, a library orientation tour was arranged for the nursing faculty, who embraced the opportunity to have a librarian teach their students life-long research skills that would help them succeed in their courses and in their careers. Before the start of the fall term, Professor Janet Jeffrey and Ilo Maimets met to organize hands-on library research workshops for all 350 third year nursing students who were new to York. These were delivered in 8 sessions outside lecture hours over the course of two weeks. Professors teaching 4th year courses didn't want their students to miss out, and requested 7 similar sessions with the librarian as a guest lecturer during scheduled class time.

Both the learning outcomes and the feedback received have been very positive.
Instructors find that class time devoted to acquiring good research skills pays off in the quality of the writing and work produced by their students. In fact, so successful was this approach that many of the faculty have followed up in the second term with additional requests for research instruction geared to specific assignments. They have also included the librarian as a part of their monthly "scholarly conversations" where they evaluate course readings and materials, and keep each other up to date with new developments in their field. For their part, Nursing students are very comfortable to request librarian assistance via e-mail and in person, and they appreciate the level of service that the library provides.

Ensuring Success

While the profiles of these two groups of students are quite different, the need to learn effective research skills and strategies applies to both groups. The driving force and key to success in both of these experiences has been the relationship between faculty and librarian. This underscores the importance of faculty buy-in to the successful implementation of an information literacy program.

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