Faculty-directed library use instruction: A single class, retrospective study

Abstract

This paper examines the effect of prescriptive, faculty-directed library research instruction on student term paper quality. At a major midwestern university, students in an intermediate political science class were offered an opportunity to have their library research evaluated as part of a term paper project. Following instruction by a librarian, an instructor review of a research plan, a research log, and an annotated bibliography, as well as other intermediate writing steps, students completed a term paper. After controls for subject-specific knowledge were applied, documented student research has an independent, direct, and statistically significant effect of approximately one mark, e.g., from a C to a C+ on the final term paper grade. Although modest, this persistent, and measurable product of only short-term efforts suggests important benefits to students' receiving faculty guidance in library instruction. Of course, idiosyncrasies related to the instructor, the course, or the students may have contributed to the results presented here. Only additional research on this model of faculty involvement in other settings can establish how general the results presented are.