Interviews with undergraduates about research

In November 2017 we conducted hour-long interviews with three undergraduate students about how they conduct research for their course work. Listening to these students led to recommendations for improving our website and our instruction program.

Overview

The instruction team at NCSU Libraries wanted to talk to undergraduate students about how they conduct research for their course work. Two staff conducted hour-long interviews with three students.

The interviewers asked each student to think of a recent research project they completed for a class, explain the background of the assignment, and demonstrate on a laptop the research techniques they had used.

FINDINGS

  • Participants preferred doing subject-based searches in Google or Google Scholar instead of searching on the Libraries’ website. When they began their demonstration of research, none of the three started on the Libraries’ website.
  • Participants wanted summary or abstract information on the search results page to determine which sources are useful, something lacking in QuickSearch, the Libraries' default search tool.
  • Participants didn’t switch tabs when asked to do a search on the Libraries' website, using the default “All” tab. (Analytics show that 24% of users in 2017 switched tabs.)
  • Participants with research topics in the sciences moved on to other results if we didn’t have a resource they thought was useful, because they were confident they would find enough other sources to complete their assignments.
  • One participant with a research topic in the humanities took advantage of Tripsaver, NCSU Libraries’ interlibrary loan and delivery service, when he found a useful resource we did not have access to. He was already familiar with the service. “Tripsaver’s been a Godsend,” he said.
  • All three participants said mandatory assignments using library resources in freshman and sophomore years would help them become better researchers more quickly. Note that working toward mandatory library assignments for all undergraduates at NCSU does not appear in recommendations below. It is interesting and flattering that these students said this, but it is beyond the scope of our instruction program.

RECOMMENDATIONS

  • Consider adding summary or abstract information on the QuickSearch results page.
  • The Libraries’ instruction team should consider teaching Google Scholar to early-career undergraduates since so many discover it on their own.

 

How We Did It

Each semester, we receive from the NCSU Office of Institutional Research and Planning a random sample of 2,000 students’ email addresses. We then email that list to ask who would like to opt-in to be on a list of students periodically invited to participate in studies that semester.

For these interviews, we emailed the list to find interested students. We were able to schedule interviews with three undergraduate students. We incentivized their participation with boxed lunches.

 

Team