Introduction & Background
New BA Advertising Students at UAL are invited to an induction session delivered by myself (a librarian) and a member of the Advertising teaching team. The session teaches a nervous/shy transnational cohort of students, library skills, as well as orientating them with the physical library space, and offering a shared forum for reflection/assessment on advertising focused library items/books.
Evaluation
The strategies used focus on reducing social-anxiety and fostering early interactions with peers at the same time as developing library searching skills. This approach follows well-researched practices in librarianship regarding how we introduce information literacy to creative arts students (Appleton, et al, 2017). The activities in the session are designed to counter students developing doubts about their academic skills – a phenomena identified as imposter syndrome by Clance & Imes (1978) and more recently contextualised within the academic library sector by a range of theorists including Ramsey and Brown (2018). To overcome this, the session avoids overloading, only introducing the necessary skills required to carry out the first searches. Crucially these skills are immediately put into practice, with students sent on a treasure hunt to find advertising items/books that they find interesting or fun. This exercise following pedagogical practices set out by Whitton & Langan regarding the benefits of fun in academic teaching (2019). As a ploy students are put into small groups, allowing peer support, and a chance to naturally break through initial social barriers, make friends and have fun; ticking many of Whitton & Langan’s thematic network boxes (see diagram) (2019).
Challenges and ways of moving forward
Large lecture theatre
Starting the session in a large lecture theatre can undermine the group activity and collaboration which ultimately make the session work and reduce anxiety. Again, referring to Ramsey & Brown, who identify secure and happy experiences in the library as a way to tackle imposter syndrome (2019), I would like to consider small friendly tours around the space prior to some of the necessary library skills scaffolding in the lecture theatre.
Making the most of the sharing exercise
There is already a lot of joy and fun in the sharing exercise, but ultimately it doesn’t let the students share aspects of who they are and where they have come from. This is explored further in the next point.
Addressing the needs of the international cohort
Although the group activities more broadly support and settle the breadth of identities in the group (avoiding seeing the ‘international students’ as a homogenous other) it doesn’t help to share or celebrate the diversity of interests in the classroom. I’ve been inspired by the survey of possible library activity in this area carried out by Collins & Garcia (2020), who in their moving forward statement suggest collection development and highlighting of fields that cover all of the national identities of their students, as a way of addressing this. The library at UAL is already doing a great deal of this work, and I would like to think it might be highlighted in some way in the search exercise element of the session.
References
- Appleton, L., Grandal Montero, G., & Jones, A. (2017) Creative Approaches to Information Literacy for Creative Arts Students. Communications in Information Literacy, 11 (1), 147-167. https://doi.org/10.15760/comminfolit.2017.11.1.39
- Collins, I.S. and Garcia, I.B. (2020) UK university libraries supporting transnational education (TNE) partnerships. Insights: the UKSG journal, 33(1), p.20.DOI: https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.517
- Clance, P.R. and Imes, S.A. (1978) The imposter phenomenon in high achieving women: Dynamics and therapeutic intervention. Psychotherapy: Theory, research & practice, 15(3), p.241.
- Elizabeth Ramsey & Deana Brown. (2018) Feeling like a fraud: Helping students renegotiate their academic identities, College & Undergraduate Libraries, 25:1, 86-90, DOI: 10.1080/10691316.2017.1364080
- Nicola Whitton & Mark Langan. (2019) Fun and games in higher education: an analysis of UK student perspectives, Teaching in Higher Education, 24:8, 1000-1013, DOI: 10.1080/13562517.2018.1541885