SHU Library and Skills Centre Teachmeet: The Student Voice

I will present on the development and launch of the reading for pleasure collection at Birkbeck, focusing on how students were involved throughout.
 

Birkbeck, University of London is an evening college catering to a diverse student population who are typically time poor, balancing studies around work and family. As such, our collection is largely a teaching one. However, student feedback following a UX project and other collaborations indicated a desire for leisure reading in the Library. Our Reading for Pleasure collection was chosen by Birkbeck students from independent bookshops in our local area and launched in January 2019. My presentation will discuss the impact of this collection.

My role is Assistant Librarian (Disability and Dyslexia Support), supporting students with mental health conditions, physical disabilities and specific learning difficulties. I deliver information literacy training through one-to-ones and workshops, and train students to use assistive technology.

Scaffolding reading and critical analysis of journal articles: taking students on a year-long academic journey from "Where is the title of this article?" to confidently searching, evaluating, synthesising and presenting about a topic in optometry.  - Bradford University.

Jennifer Rowland is Subject Librarian for Optometry (and other subjects) at the University of Bradford. She obtained Fellowship of the HEA in 2017. In 2017-18 her SCONUL teaching stats show that she led over 3,500 student-hours of teaching (for audiences from foundation students to research staff), and this year she has already done more than that, which explains why she’s so tired.

She tweets as @BradMDTlib.

I previously worked as a lecturer and course leader on the University Cert/PGDIP in Post Compulsory Education, supporting a range of FE and HE academics in developing their teaching practice. I now work as a Learning Developer at Keele University, affiliated to the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and located in the Institute for Innovation and and Teaching Excellence. In addition to working with subject-specific academics in the curriculum, I develop open access workshops that engage students (and increasingly staff) in interdisciplinary explorations of academic practices. 

Having explored a range of strategies, including scrolling and textmapping (Middlebrook, 1994) to develop academic reading practices, I remained frustrated with the limited time for deeper learning about the purpose of enquiry and the relationship of reading to enquiry. Writing retreats, which safeguard time but also ensure structure seemed to offer a possible solution and have inspired two reading retreat models focused specifically on academic journal articles. This workshop will provide an overview of the structure and an opportunity to experience some of the strategies employed in open and embedded reading retreats, alongside a discussion of the benefits and limitations of both models