Going Paperless: First Year Students, Selfies, and Information Literacy

Have you used an online survey to collect and review library instruction activities? That’s the radically simple solution Solveig Lund and Virginia Connell from Concordia College, Moorhead, described to make their first-year outreach paperless. Concordia’s Library Launch instruction is connected with students’ first-year experience courses. Librarians visit nearly every course and use the Library Launch to introduce the library and its role in academic success. The Library Launch includes, among other components, a multifaceted activity comprised of finding a book, investigating circulation desk services, finding the full text of an article, and consulting with a librarian. Lund, Connell, and colleagues recently moved the activity portion paperless by using a Qualtrics survey to collect activity responses. This move makes the collection of activity responses more sustainable, provides for easier qualitative assessment, includes analysis and reports for synthesis, and focuses on the use of library resources on mobile devices, which is what students at Concordia Moorhead typically use. During a class workshop, students are presented with the activity and work in pairs throughout the library to complete it. The questions are randomized to prevent clustering at any one point of the activity. As students move through the activities, they are introduced to library services to support their immediate research assignment in that class. But research anxiety is also reduced for future research assignments. One of the activity points includes student selfies with library materials, which are posted to a service called Tagboard where they can be viewed by the class during a debriefing discussion. Lund and Connell feel this new method increases student engagement with activities, is a sustainable practice that involves less work for library staff, and encourages social media connections with students.