When the Graduate School came knocking at the library door…

… a tale of invitation, collaboration and innovation

Introducing…

• Background– WebCT– Standard online courses– Moderated courses

• Moodle pilot– Moderated course ‘Introduction to the literature review

process’• Forums are the cornerstone of the course

The Graduate School

• Visiting tutors on ‘Intro to Literature Review Process’ – Course NOT about literature

searching

• Observed different style of learning and teaching– Evident from forum contributions that

participants needed help with search strategies

Invitation

Why do it?

–Something new

–Untraditional > One size doesn’t fit > Reach students

The times they are a-changin’

How it works How it works

The tasks

What it’s like

•Change and develop > Course + Tutors

added, omitted, amended

•Gently does it... > tentative involvement at first

•Learn from other participants

•When to intervene...? Too soon, too late

Challenges

•Subject database knowledge

•Time...

•Intensive

•Slots

•Gaps

•Relationship building

•Recapping

•More committed time

•Working hours v evening

Example post: introducing

Re: Welcome and socialisation forum

By JM - Friday, 25 January 2013, 11:27 AM

Tutor post

Hi All,

I'm one of the librarians in the Medicine & Health Sciences

faculty team here at UoN and I'll also be one of the tutors on

this course. I'm going to be around first thing Monday

morning and so will look forward to meeting everyone on

here then.

Jane

Example post: are you joining us?

Re: Show and tell forum

By JC - Monday, 28 January 2013, 03:45 PM

Tutor post

Hi. There's been lots of really interesting and useful

discussion this morning, but keep it coming! If you haven't

posted yet, please do and share your experiences with the

rest of the group.

Jenny

Example post: specific answer

Re: Compare and contrast forum

by ND - Wednesday, 30 January 2013, 01:59 PM

Tutor post

Hi D,

In addition to the very helpful advice from E, in terms of using the CINAHL

database specifically, it might be best to enter each search term one at a

time. This will allow you to choose the appropriate CINAHL heading/s

from the database's thesaurus. You would then be able to combine the

results of each search term together using the "Search with AND" button.

Nicola

Example post: back on track

Re: Compare and contrast forum

By EN - Tuesday, 21 February 2012, 11:23 AM

Hi Katrina,

Thanks for sharing your experience of searching your own

research topic. Do you now want to have a go at one of

the searches we've outlined in today's task and then compare

and contrast the results in a follow-up post?

Elizabeth

Example post: end of task summary

Re: The matrix forum

by SH - Thursday, 31 January 2013, 10:16 AM

Tutor post

Thank you for all your interesting contributions to the “Compare and Contrast” forum, which allowed you to

think more deeply about the functionality of the various databases and to apply the advanced search

techniques to the pre-defined question in your selected subject area.

Several of you commented on the iterative nature of the search process. On Friday we will be looking at ways

of saving your searches so you can run them again. Several of you found the exercise allowed you to use

databases you may not have considered before. You commented that searching across a variety of databases

in the initial stages of a literature review gave you more confidence in identifying the most useful ones for

your subject.

I’ll be online this morning and am looking forward to your thoughts on today’s exercise applying the search

matrix to your own research question. Don't forget to attach a copy of your matrix to your post!

Susan

Example post: bit late…

Email sent Tue 12/02/2013 08:36

Dear N,

It’s great to see you posting but I’m afraid this course

ran from 28 Jan to 1 Feb, and so there won’t be any

tutor support I’m afraid.

If you would like to rebook for the next course (29 April

to 3 May), you can now do this online at:

http://pd.nottingham.ac.uk/

Very best wishes,

Elizabeth

“Today, and more than ever,

I FEEL LIKE A RESEARCHER”.

PT FT

16

96

Participants by status

MRes Doctorate

9

103

Participants by type of PGR

Yr 1 Yr 2 Yr 3 Yr 4 +

68

28

12

4

Participants by stage

Arts SocSci MedHea SciEng

8

23

34

47

Participants by discipline

The participants

Example post: early days

Re: Spreading your wings forum

By CS - Tuesday, 13 November 2012, 05:31 PM

I am doing a multi-disciplinary PhD, and I think I fit best in ‘social science’ and ‘science

and engineering’. That is immediately the part where I started to quiver a bit, and I

realised that I have been scared off by the eLibrary Gateway. I have been avoiding it,

because there are so many options, and I was confused about where to start searching,

which databases are the most suitable for my subject(s), and how do I start searching?

While I was going through the instructions I came across ‘RSS feed’, a term which I have

seen before, but I have no idea what it means. I also learned something completely new

to me: Lemmatisation. This seems to be a very useful tool. Overall it was a very useful

exercise especially to get to know the different possibilities and the symbols used in

different databases. It is also good to know that you can save your searches in some

databases but not in others, and if you want to save them you need to be logged-in. Is

logging-in via the university login enough, or do we need to make special logins for

certain databases? I realised that I still have a lot of things to explore.

Example post: the learning deepens

Re: Compare and contrast forum

by TJL - Wednesday, 14 November 2012, 03:58 AM

Early start for me (on the heels of my task 2 posting). I ran the term, single transferable vote, through each of the

social science databases. I first used the term without quotations, accepting all the default settings, and then with

quotations (side note, I prefer the modify search function within IBSS & JSTOR). Here are the 'search result counts'

for each database:

IBSS 75/62

JSTOR 1520/504

SCOPUS 101/85

Web of Science 101/78

Sorting the lists simply by publication date, I noticed a lot of inconsistencies among the databases. For example,

Clark's article in Party Politics appears first in both IBSS and Web of Science, second on the list in SCOPUS, and not

at all in the JSTOR database. I was quite surprised how different the results were through JSTOR as the other three

databases featured a number of the same articles.

As far as what I'm taking away from this experience, I'll reiterate my comment from the task 2 exercise: the

validity, relevance and applicability of the results are so dependent on the key words used, databases selected,

and search parameters adopted.

Example post: time well spent

Re: The matrix forum

by EOA- Thursday, 3 May 2012, 04:35 PM

The search matrix doc is a brilliant tool. Getting synonyms

was easy using MS-word. The search method has given my

searching some improvements and I feel now I have got

more comprehensive and more detailed results than even

before. It takes some work putting things together initially,

but it pays off a lot at the end.

Many thanks for this tool.

Regards

E

Example post: peer to peer learning

Re: Saved searches, citation searches and alerts forum

by SN- Thursday, 31 January 2013, 10:24 PM

Web of Science offers the possibility to set search alerts but also citation alarms, which are quite useful when you

want to follow the papers you have published, or if you want to follow up on some papers/review which influence

your work etc… I found this link which helped me setting alarms on WoS:

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/BIOS/isi_alerts_2007.html. I find those tools extremely useful and I am definitely going

to use them (more) in the future.

Re: Saved searches, citation searches and alerts forum

by NME - Friday, 1 February 2013, 02:44 PM

I used WoS and SCOPUS databases to re-run the previous search results which I got from the last

task. I’ve learnt how to save my search results and create both email and RSS alerts. Both services are very

useful but personally I prefer email alerts as I check my email regularly. Thank you S, I used the link you provided to

understand how to create alerts and it is very straight forward. I’ve set Citation alerts for some research topics

which are very important. Citation alert is a very interesting tool as it allows you to follow the relevant

articles. Really great to learn these research services available in different databases.

 

“I enjoyed the course tremendously. It is not just the course materials, e.g. tutorials

on various databases and the search matrix, which are useful, it is the forum with

students' participation and experience sharing that gives me motivation to learn

more and more... I guess this is the beauty of the Moodle design for off-campus

research students like myself. The feedback from the tutors is immediate,

constructive and specific.”

“Experimenting with search techniques in different databases and participating in this

type of learning to see how it works. I enjoyed the way that I could fit in the tasks

around the rest of my day and didn't have to travel into the university… this is a good

way of giving everyone the ability to say what they think and ask questions without

being dominated by 'strong' voices.”

“The course was very useful. When I started my PhD, I received a lot of papers to

read through. I have found many more papers in the meanwhile, but it was not very

structural and I did not know how to use and choose the databases from the

eLibrary-gateway properly. Things have become much clearer now, and I learnt how

to set up an alert, etc. I just did not have/take time to explore all these things, and

the course captured it all in a clear and compact way.”

“While I initially wasn't sure what I could learn from this course that I didn't already

know, I found the matrix session really helpful, and the whole thing got me thinking

about using other databases, since clearly they aren't all overlapping. Hopefully I'll be

able to miss fewer papers in future thanks to a better search strategy.”

“This is a life-changing course for me in terms of academic study. I hope to digest

more when coming back to review all these useful things. I also hope to be able to

ask our lovely librarians in future. I need more training such as how to use Endnotes

etc, but at least I know where I have been now. Previously I was in darkness. I see the

dawn now. And I never feel scared about doing research any more.”

Post-course evaluation

1. Why did you register for the Effective Literature Searching (online) course?

2. For you, what were the advantages/disadvantages in the Effective Literature Searching course being delivered online? And, how

would you say this compared to any face-to-face information/library skills training you may have attended?

3. Approximately how much time did you spend on the course in total? Was this too much, too little or about right? Could you keep up

with the programme of tasks?

4. How did you find each of the following tasks? If you found any particularly useful or difficult, please could you explain why?

5. How did you find the contributions made by other participants? To what extent did you learn from them and to what extent do you

think you helped others? How important was this aspect of the course to you?

6. How did you find the tutors' input during the course? Was it timely? Were their responses helpful? Did you feel supported? Do you

have any comments on how this could be improved?

Tutor Support - 24/7 (or 24/5)

1. University of Nottingham, Nottingham (UK)

2. University of ? – west coast of Canada of USA, speculative

3. University of Nottingham, Ningbo (China)

Response

If you have been affected by any of the issues in today’s

tale of invitation, collaboration and innovation,

please get in touch with:

Elizabeth Newall, Faculty Team Librarian, Arts

elizabeth.newall@nottingham.ac.uk

Chris Gratton, Learning Technologist

christine.gratton@nottingham.ac.uk

Jane Maltby, Faculty Team Librarian, Medicine & Health Sciences

jane.maltby@nottingham.ac.uk

And finally…

“I followed and really enjoyed the Effective

Literature Search on-line course a year ago as a

guinea pig (I was one of the MA distance

learners). Something from the course must have

stuck, because I've just been offered a PhD place”

One year on and an email arrived out of the blue: