Findings

Our initial analysis focused on a random sample of 60 students, 35 of which provide the most complete data.  In our study of students’ process narratives, we built on Rolf Norgaard’s aspirational notion of how writing and research might interface–what he terms “writing information literacy”–to consider how students themselves articulated their writing-research activities.  Based on our collaborative analysis of the narratives, researchers identified fifteen activities associated with the processes of writing and research.  We also used students’ own language to elaborate certain writing-research activities salient in their narratives: finding a topic (most frequently mentioned), determining the relevance of sources (infrequently mentioned yet highly valued by researchers), and engaging sources (greatest change over the semester).  This study was published as the chapter, “Writing Information Literacy in First-Year Composition: A Collaboration Among Faculty and Librarians” (Scheidt, Carpenter, Fitzgerald, Kozma, Middleton, & Shields) in the collection Information Literacy: Not Just for Librarians (D’Angelo et al).

Our initial research collaboration led us to think more deeply about our respective professional assumptions and the ways in which they inform our practices as writing faculty and librarians.  In “Addressing the Symptoms: Deep Collaboration for Interrogating Differences in Professional Assumptions” (Scheidt, Carpenter, Middleton & Shields), we consider the frameworks and outcomes statements significant to our respective disciplines:  Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education (IL Framework) (ACRL), WPA Outcomes Statement for First-Year Composition (CWPA), and Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing (Writing Framework) (CWPA).  These guiding documents suggests several aims and interests in common.  Yet they also reveal telling differences symptomatic of the disciplines’ divergent operating assumptions.  What a symptomatic reading of the guidelines suggests is the need for deep collaboration among writing faculty and librarians, the kind of collaboration in which professional ideological disjuncts might surface and be meaningfully discussed.  The chapter describes the ongoing research and writing collaboration that has provided us with such opportunities to interrogate our differences and reconsider our respective values.

In another study currently being written up for publication, we worked with program assessment data and student synthesis essays to explore how first-year students engage sources in their writing and how faculty recognize that engagement as a valued quality of their reading experience.  We have found highly significant correlations between high-scoring essays on assessment and certain moves students made with respect to sources, such as explaining, connecting, and developing sources. Faculty also appreciated student essays more highly the more often those essays worked diversely with sources, engaging with sources in a variety of ways.  You can find out more about this work here.

The questions that guide Phase 2 of our research are as follows:

• How do students understand research?  How do students understand writing?  Do students understand research and writing as in interaction with one another?  If so, how so?
• Have students’ understandings of writing and research changed since their first year?  How so?
• To what do students attribute their shaping influences as researchers and as writers?

At this point, our findings during this phase of the project are based primarily on the interviews with the three student research participants.  Our focus is currently on the first question–how students understand research–and related questions:  How does a student’s understanding of research shape what she perceives herself to be doing with respect to her sourced writing projects?  Is a student’s understanding of research shaped by those projects?  How so?  Why?

We understand sourced writing as not so much produced by students as experienced by them, adopting an approach similar to The Meaningful Writing Project (Eodice, Geller, & Lerner).  A researched writing project as experienced by a student might highlight the course as a whole in which the project occurred, some particular component of the research or writing, an interaction with a professor, or something else.  What one student experiences with respect to a project is not necessarily what another student experiences with respect to the same assignment, in the same course.  We also draw on the terminology of The Meaningful Writing Project, observing that sourced writing can be more or less “meaningful” to a student.

In our own study, each student experienced a meaningful research and writing project.  For the students as a whole, these meaningful experiences occurred in major classes–an introduction to econometrics, a research methods course in criminal justice–as well as outside of the major (i.e., a gender and identity course completed as part of a study abroad and counting as a “maturity” requirement).

Each of our student participants experienced both “more meaningful” and “less meaningful” projects.  Thus, we are able to compare what is meaningful and what lacks meaning about projects for the very same student.  This comparison helps us to articulate more fully the challenges to meaning (and thus development) faced by students.

Related to this, we designed our study as an exploration of undergraduates’ understandings of research–what those understandings of research are, how they change, and what influences that change.  The narrative of change and development, then, informs the projects students describe.  In other words, these projects are “more meaningful” (or “less meaningful”) in the context of our study specifically because students associate them with growth and change in how they come to understand research (or not).

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Finding #1:

Undergraduates come into our courses and workshops with very different understandings of research and writing that shape their experiences.  It is not necessarily that a course, instructor, or project is somehow inherently more or less meaningful.

Finding #2:

The research and writing experiences that undergraduates find meaningful change their understanding of research in some way. Specifically, the change that occurs enhances their sense of what research is and/or their sense of themselves as researchers–e.g., sense of authority, self-efficacy, research as an ongoing process.

Finding #3:

Meaningful research and writing experiences can happen for undergraduates when:

• Students have agency with respect to their projects.  Specifically, students’ personal interest in and passion for their topics and projects influenced how they engaged with their research.
• Students conduct primary research, assisted by means and methods for evaluating sources, analyzing them, and determining how to use them (e.g., organizational templates, software, disciplinary ethics).  Each of the more meaningful research and writing experiences in our study involved students working with primary sources and data.  Faculty introduced students to approaches for navigating and making sense of these materials, and students demonstrated an instrumentalist respect for these research approaches.
• Faculty provide guidance and feedback on research and writing that is taken up by students, and they more often remember students and their projects.  The students interviewed did not consistently acknowledge their professors to be at the forefront of their experiences of research and writing.  And, when students did acknowledge faculty, their influence was not necessarily perceived to be helpful or positive.  Nevertheless, we did find that professors who were influential in a good way were often quoted by students, or their advice taken up in other respects.  It was sometimes the case, too, that these professors remembered students, even when the student was not exceptional as far as grades or performance.

Finding #4:

The meaning and potentiality of research and writing experiences are not necessarily manifested in projects and grades, often because of students’ strategic investment of resources perceived to be limited.  Students were influenced in their research and writing by grades and other factors (e.g., time, how easy or difficult they thought it would be to find sources related to their topics).  These factors influenced the projects students produced and the grades they received.  Yet students did not necessarily associate meaning with grades or even the quality of projects they produced.  The projects that students discussed as meaningful were not necessarily their “A” projects.

We anticipate further findings relating to the following questions regarding the survey data as well as source engagement:

• What factors correlate with students’ understanding of writing and research (e.g., growth mindset, experiences, self-efficacy)?
• How do students engage with sources in significant general education and major coursework as they progress through their college careers?
• Do students’ engagements with sources differ significantly from their first-year writing course?  If so, how?

Eodice, Michele, Anne Ellen Geller, and Neal Lerner. The Meaningful Writing Project: Learning, Teaching, and Writing in Higher Education. Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 2016. Print.

Our data collection with respect to faculty currently provides background for our focus on student research participants (Phase 2).  We hope, however, eventually to find out more about how faculty think about research in the contexts of their teaching.  We also hope to discover how faculty in different disciplines define and recognize students’ engagement with sources.  We anticipate that these faculty-focused findings will inform us as to the extent to which and how faculty influence their students’ understanding of research and source engagement.