December 10, 2007
For Students, It's About Courses, Not Subjects
Students aren’t interested in online information gateways about subjects. They’re interested in information related to their courses. That’s the message this week from ACRLog, the blog for academic and research librarians, as the blogger Steven Bell attempts to counsel professors and librarians on ways to reach out to students.
He cites a recent study in the journal Portal, in which Oregon State University librarians found that students were much more interested in information if it was linked to a course they were taking. Topic-oriented information collections were much less compelling. —Josh Fischman
Posted on Monday December 10, 2007 | Permalink |Comments
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Anti-war poet activists are more interested in the parking problem on their block than in the general problem of parking in an industrial society? As my grandmother would have said, will wonders never cease!
— S. Britchky Dec 10, 05:09 PM #
The ability of human beings to overlook the obvious is once again displayed. Gee, isn’t it amazing that students are goal-oriented like anyone else? The basic concepts of adult education apply once again.
— Al Dec 10, 06:04 PM #
I will like to be one of the student in the school
— rogbitan bamidele omoniyi Dec 11, 05:51 AM #
Probably took another really expensive government study to figure this out. If students were reaching out to librarians, would you suggest they use generic subjects, or something that has to do with libraries? Good grief!
— Evelyn Dec 11, 05:27 PM #
It shouldn’t be any surprise that students don’t want to do the work to find the information they need. They also want to believe that all the information they need is in one place, and they also want it all fed to them by somebody else who does their work and their thinking for them.
Our students need to become independent in their information needs and not reliant on others to spoon feed it to them.
— James Dec 13, 03:25 AM #