Blog #3: Research Project Design

My previous experience working with undergraduates (and high school seniors, as well), is that they are, as a group, very unlikely to independently seek help from librarians or writing lab tutors when working on research assignments. I assume the factors for this are any combination of the following:

a.  They do not know about the type of help that is available to them
b.  They feel confident in their work and don't feel they need help
c.  They have procrastinated so long on the assignment that there is no time for help
d.  They know there is help available and that they would benefit from it, but they feel intimidated about asking for it.

Using Richards and Morse's five steps, the following is a potential research design for my study:

1.  Establish purpose:  After working with undergraduates that did stop at the reference desk, it was common for them to remark about how valuable the service was, or that they wished they would have known earlier they could ask for help here.  I would like to know more about why students are not using these services and how librarians and writing centers might work together to invite more students in.

2.  Methodological location:  Like most qualitative research projects, my project will be inductive, meaning I will be looking at particular instances and trying to make a generalization of some sort.

3.  Scoping:  I will interview a number of students (3-5?),  reference desk librarians (2?), and writing tutors (2?) at two local private colleges, one with a writing center inside the library and one outside of it. By talking with 14-18 people, I hope to have enough responses to make my pilot study valid as well as manageable.

4: Nature of Data: I will be asking students who do/do not visit the writing centers and reference desks why they did/did not, what their understanding of the two services are, and how helpful they found them.  I will be asking reference desk librarians and writing lab tutors about their perceptions of students, each other, and ways that they have/have not collaborated.

5:  Thinking Ahead:  I believe this study should help shed light on the value of these two services and how they could be more helpful to students.  Because I plan to study two campuses with different models, I am obviously looking to compare and contrast.  If it seems positioning the writing center within the library does lead to more use of and collaboration between services, I will focus on that.  If, however, there is no discernible difference between the two models, then I will look at factors outside of their locations that may help explain students' perceptions and use.