Boy did this bring back annoying memories. It's so completely inconsiderate to do an assignment like this which the kids are often uninvested in and which produces more work for campus staff. And as you point out, it's also done without any kind of coordination or training.
Back when I was an academic librarian there was one faculty member who had an assignment each semester that basically had their students do a kind of scavenger hunt in the library. Done properly, this could be a fun approach to learning how to find resources. But as you might guess, it was not. They were given no training or preparation and just sent to the library where, of course, the onus was on whoever was at the reference desk when they came in to do what amounted to an hour's workshop.
Other faculty did it better -- we did in-class presentations, or they came down to the library to do a session geared specifically to the types of resources that group of students would need to be familiar with. Or they accompanied their students in a group and did a lot of the instruction themselves. At the very least some also pointed out particular resources for students to use for an assignment and gave them the handouts we created as guides.
But not this faculty member. Ideally a student with any sense of motivation or curiosity would use the assignment to learn how the library worked. It was certainly something they could do with a question or two, the handouts, and some willingness to learn. However that describes very few students and in fairness to really learn about the resources they'd need would take hours across several days.
Instead they were frustrated, angry, and more intimidated than ever in using a facility that was often very different from any library they'd used before, assuming they'd ever done so. The only good thing is that the students and library staff both loathed the assignment and could share the frustration.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2018-09-21 07:31 pm (UTC)Back when I was an academic librarian there was one faculty member who had an assignment each semester that basically had their students do a kind of scavenger hunt in the library. Done properly, this could be a fun approach to learning how to find resources. But as you might guess, it was not. They were given no training or preparation and just sent to the library where, of course, the onus was on whoever was at the reference desk when they came in to do what amounted to an hour's workshop.
Other faculty did it better -- we did in-class presentations, or they came down to the library to do a session geared specifically to the types of resources that group of students would need to be familiar with. Or they accompanied their students in a group and did a lot of the instruction themselves. At the very least some also pointed out particular resources for students to use for an assignment and gave them the handouts we created as guides.
But not this faculty member. Ideally a student with any sense of motivation or curiosity would use the assignment to learn how the library worked. It was certainly something they could do with a question or two, the handouts, and some willingness to learn. However that describes very few students and in fairness to really learn about the resources they'd need would take hours across several days.
Instead they were frustrated, angry, and more intimidated than ever in using a facility that was often very different from any library they'd used before, assuming they'd ever done so. The only good thing is that the students and library staff both loathed the assignment and could share the frustration.