Back to the Basics | From the Bell Tower
Picking up on a trend in higher education, perhaps there's a way to improve student research skills by going retro Steven Bell, Associate University Librarian, Temple University, Philadelphia, PAJan 13, 2011
We are no longer expected to understand how anything really works in our world. We're being trained to push the right buttons to get the desired results, with no need to care what's happening behind the scenes. Take modern cars as an example: we simply turn the key or push a button, the engine runs and we step on the gas and steer the thing. The folks at Mercedes-Benz have even removed fluid dipsticks on certain models because they want the driver to stay away from the engine compartment completely, for fear he or she will really mess something up under there. The message we get from our technologies is "You have no need to understand what's happening inside here: be happy; don't think; trust me; enjoy the ride." But there may actually an opportunity in taking a step back and giving our students a handle on the technology we're putting in front of them.
I trust it
A study that garnered some attention in 2010 examined college students' ability to evaluate web content. One of the findings of "Trust Online" indicated that the students have almost no understanding of how search engines work. Few students could explain how the engines determine what websites appear on the first page of the results or how certain sites make it to the top of the list.
Likewise, we all know students who swear by EBSCOhost or JSTOR, without really understanding much about their other options. When it comes to the information environment, it has become increasingly difficult for anyone other than a librarian or information scientist to really understand how any of these technologies work.
Raise your hand if you think any of your non-librarian friends or relatives could explain the difference between keyword and relevance retrieval search systems. No hands? That's what I thought. What's worse is that sinking feeling that they don't care and don't want to know as long as they get what they need without much effort or thinking.
The joy of doing it yourself
But a new movement may offer a small degree of hope. Two books in particular achieved their popularity because they deliver a unique message for our over-technologized existence: doing things with your own hands is good for the planet and your soul. Published in 2009, Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soul Craft touched a nerve by meditating on the beauty and value of accomplishing tasks with one's own hands. That was followed in 2010 by Mark Frauenfelder's Made by Hand, a book that extols the virtues of making things out of the stuff of landfills, and sends the message that when we use our own hands to make things we do both ourselves and the world a favor.
I'd hardly describe myself as a hardcore do-it-yourselfer. You sure wouldn't want me to add an electrical outlet to your house. But I've never taken any car I've owned to a shop for an oil change, preferring to do it myself. And despite battles with weather, insects, and deer, growing vegetables in my own garden is rewarding and the produce always tastes better than store bought. I'm convinced of the value of self-sufficiency and working with your hands is a good thing, and I'm not alone: one reason academic librarians might want to pay more attention to this movement are the signs of a growing "pre-technology", do-it-yourself presence in higher education.
A return to pre-technology days
When I refer to a do-it-yourself movement in higher education, I'm talking about more than those edupunks who prefer to build their own technologies for teaching and learning rather than use whatever complex system their university happens to offer. I'm talking about faculty who are taking their students into completely new territory by exposing them to the way things worked before we had computers. Two articles on this movement appeared in the same issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. The first one profiled a course where students learn to make and use prehistoric tools. One of the highlights, depending on your perspective, is when the students actually butcher a deer with their handmade tools, and in the course's final session students may partake of a meal in which the featured menu item is their deer. It may sound a bit barbaric, but the students find the course "awesome"-they clearly connect with their instructor and content in way that is both "experiential and experimental," and they're learning in a way that isn't possible in many hi-tech courses.
The second article offered a similar experiential learning example, detailing an assignment to recreate the practices of the political movements that brought down Communism in Eastern Europe. To complete the assignment the students created handmade printing presses, crafted their stories on manual typewriters and distributed their revolutionary pamphlets by hand.
Most revealing are the instructor's insights about how after years of teaching about the role of journalism in revolutions, he was never able, until he tried this new approach, to get the students to really understand how true societal change requires great human effort. Getting hands-on experience taught the students a real lesson about how tweets and status updates are of little use to an underground press, and that people are not powerless as long as they are willing to put their hands to use.
Turning back the page in the library
As I read these articles I found myself wondering how we academic librarians might apply a hands-on, back to the roots movement to the practice of teaching research skills to college students. Perhaps it is difficult to reach them because the technologies we offer do nothing to ignite a spark of interest. If you've seen one search engine, you've seen them all, right? But what if we could offer a way for students to see what lies behind the technology, the way these faculty are allowing their students to experience learning with their hands?
I remember how we learned about indexes in library school. We did it by making indexes out of articles. We created our own keywords, and then we used them to search for information in our homemade database. That hands-on approach enabled us students to really "get" what subject indexes are and how to use them. Can you imagine a technology-free library instruction session? Too radical? What about bringing out a few old printed indexes like the old Reader's Guide (assuming you can find some)? I have a feeling our students might actually enjoy getting back to basics, and by basics, I mean zero technology.
No contemporary educator expects today's students to give up their technology for old ways, anymore than we expect them to start killing and butchering their own food. But there may be something to allowing millennial students to figure out how things work by letting them go hands-on in the library. I don't doubt you can come up with a dozen reasons why an idea like this might work for a regular course but not library research instruction. But if we can improve student research skills by going retro, then isn't that something we can't afford not to try?
Steven Bell is Associate University Librarian, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA. For more from Steven visit his blogs, Kept-Up Academic Librarian, ACRLog and Designing Better Libraries or visit his website.
