Comments on: Creating Passionate 11th Graders http://acrlog.org/2006/01/06/creating-passionate-11th-graders/ Blogging by and for academic and research librarians Sat, 04 Feb 2012 22:32:54 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Barbara Fister http://acrlog.org/2006/01/06/creating-passionate-11th-graders/comment-page-1/#comment-421 Barbara Fister Sat, 07 Jan 2006 23:46:17 +0000 http://acrlblog.org/?p=130#comment-421 This is inspiring. I think we need to bear in mind that our students return multiple times to the library and (sometimes) stop by the reference desk for Library Session Parts II, III, and IV. This happens a lot in specialized branch libraries - I'll bet many science librarians know students working on big projects on a first name basis. But we not only don't grade the final product, we rarely see it (and so don't have a chance to add our perspective to the grade - or to adjust our teaching or redesign our Website if something obviously failed to click). For another take on this idea, making first year seminars more academically based and an introduction not to college life but to academic ways of thinking, see Doug Brent's article, "Reinventing WAC (Again): The First-Year Seminar and Academic Literacy." CCC 57.2 (2005): 253-276. You can download a draft from his <a href="http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/%7Edabrent/mystuff.html" rel="nofollow">Website</a>, which is chock full o' good stuff. What's interesting is the difference in understanding between students who do research because, well, they have to write a paper with references, but they don't really know why or care, and those who spend a lot of the course doing research about real topics. It's not that they become fine writers or researchers, or even necessarily passionate about it, but they get the idea that research is about tapping into a network of conversation, not just a matter of writing something, sticking in some quotes, and documenting it. They've learned something essential about the academic approach to the world that you can't grasp until you've done it. What would be interesting would be to revisit these students in a few years - to see if by getting that insight early, students became better (more accomplished, more engaged, more passionate?) at academic work generally by having this experience in the first year. This is inspiring. I think we need to bear in mind that our students return multiple times to the library and (sometimes) stop by the reference desk for Library Session Parts II, III, and IV. This happens a lot in specialized branch libraries – I’ll bet many science librarians know students working on big projects on a first name basis. But we not only don’t grade the final product, we rarely see it (and so don’t have a chance to add our perspective to the grade – or to adjust our teaching or redesign our Website if something obviously failed to click).

For another take on this idea, making first year seminars more academically based and an introduction not to college life but to academic ways of thinking, see Doug Brent’s article, “Reinventing WAC (Again): The First-Year Seminar and Academic Literacy.” CCC 57.2 (2005): 253-276. You can download a draft from his Website, which is chock full o’ good stuff.

What’s interesting is the difference in understanding between students who do research because, well, they have to write a paper with references, but they don’t really know why or care, and those who spend a lot of the course doing research about real topics. It’s not that they become fine writers or researchers, or even necessarily passionate about it, but they get the idea that research is about tapping into a network of conversation, not just a matter of writing something, sticking in some quotes, and documenting it. They’ve learned something essential about the academic approach to the world that you can’t grasp until you’ve done it.

What would be interesting would be to revisit these students in a few years – to see if by getting that insight early, students became better (more accomplished, more engaged, more passionate?) at academic work generally by having this experience in the first year.

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