Notes from TLG Connect: Reflections on Graduate Orientations

This intimate discussion revolved around the challenges, experiences, and hopes for providing effective orientations for graduate students. Below are a few tips and ideas that emerged. Listen to the audio recording for more of our discussion.

Keep it simple (what do they need to know right now?)

• After initially approaching orientations as BI sessions, Deb has since had better success with more general overviews based on what they need to know just to get started. Her current efforts include a visual orientation using images in PPT, set to a Q&A format.
• Emily likes to keep the emphasis on establishing an ongoing relationship with graduate students, and presenting a human face to the Libraries, raising awareness of services they may need in the future, without getting bogged down in details.
• Create handouts or guides to provide information and links.

Create an interactive environment

• We’re all interested in getting more input from grad students about what they already know, what they’d like to know, how they’d like to have instruction delivered, and their research interests.
• One idea is to ask them about their concerns and anxieties as they get started, as well as what they have found most valuable, whether in terms of people, tools, sources from the library in their previous academic experiences. This would give students a chance to share valuable tips with each other while giving the librarian an opportunity to translate how some of those services translate to this new setting.
• Another approach would be to contact graduate students who had just completed their first year, and ask them what they wished they had known during that first month of grad school. Use this to help structure future orientations.
• Hold a monthly synchronous discussion space where students can check-in, ask questions, even if off-campus.

Readings

Article explaining the use of online discussion boards for a synchronous online workshop on doing literature reviews for distance graduate students

• Rempel, J. G., & McMillen, P. S. (2008). Using courseware discussion boards to engage graduate students in online library workshops. Internet Reference Services Quarterly, 13(4), 363-380.

Study on the information-seeking behavior of PhD students; suggests possibilities for how librarians can more effectively communicate and serve this group:

• Fleming-May, R., & Yuro, L. (2009). From student to scholar: the academic library and social sciences Phd students’ transformation. Portal: Libraries and the Academy, 9(2), 199-220.

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