new study of student research behavior

Beyond Google: How do students conduct academic research? by Alison J. HeadFirst Monday, volume 12, number 8 (August 2007),URL: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue12_8/head/index.html

Quotes (my emphasis):
"A picture of the student research experience emerged from our survey data:

• Most students were confused by what college–level research entails. Students faced a variety of obstacles working against them, including their own procrastination with getting started on assignments (73 percent).
• Other challenges were related to accessing resource materials, especially what students described as their inability to narrow down topics and make them manageable (59 percent) and their tendency to become overwhelmed by the plethora of available resources (60 percent).
• Students felt they did not have enough information from professors to begin assignments (85 percent) and over two–thirds had difficulties gauging what professors wanted from one class to the next (67 percent)."

Students reported they had the best chance of succeeding (i.e., getting a good grade) when these options were available:

• Turning in drafts of papers, reviewed with comments added by the professor and then rewritten and resubmitted by the student (82 percent).
• Individual sessions with librarians for narrowing down unwieldy research topics (68 percent).
• One–on–one professor to student coaching sessions, focusing on how to overcome obstacles with conducting research (72 percent).

We offer three recommendations, based on our findings, for improving the student research process in a digital age:

• Research assignment handouts disseminated to students should include details about expectations for conducting quality research, including the use of the Internet.
• Professors and librarians should recognize students’ needs for individualized coaching, so that students’ abilities to find, select, and evaluate resources may be improved.
• Above all, the value of “high touch” interactions (human–mediated) with students in addition to “high tech” interactions (computer–mediated) should not be underestimated.

Question for us: is there anything we can do to address these recommendations? For example, will our planned ramping up of Wimba sessions help? Might an additional avenue of interaction (e.g., work with faculty to have them require their students to sign up for a one-2-one Wimba or phone or IM session with a librarian to get them started on their research paper?). And perhaps we should develop a Wimba session devoted to locating a research topic?