Studying Students
The Undergraduate Research Project at the University of Rochester
edited by
Nancy Fried Foster and Susan Gibbons
Association of College and Research Libraries
A division of the American Library Association
Chicago 2007
Edited by
Nancy Fried Foster
Susan Gibbons
Studying Students:
The Undergraduate Research Project
at the University of Rochester
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National
Standard for Information Sciences–Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI
Z39.48-1992. ∞
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Studying students : the Undergraduate Research Project at the University of Rochester / edited by
Nancy Fried Foster and Susan Gibbons.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8389-8437-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. University of Rochester. River Campus Libraries--Case studies. 2. University of Rochester-
-Students--Case studies. 3. Academic libraries--Use studies. 4. Report writing. 5. Research. 6.
Study skills. I. Foster, Nancy Fried. II. Gibbons, Susan (Susan L.), 1970-
Z733.U868S78 2007
025.5’877--dc22
2007028559
Printed in the United States of America.
11 10 09 08 07
5 4 3 2 1
Contents
v
Introduction to the Undergraduate Research Project
Nancy Fried Foster and Susan Gibbons
1
one. Faculty Expectations of Student Research
Barbara Alvarez and Nora Dimmock
7
two. Asking Students about Their Research
Vicki Burns and Kenn Harper
16
three. Night Owl Librarians: Shifting the Reference Clock
Suzanne Bell and Alan Unsworth
20
four. Library Design and Ethnography
Susan Gibbons and Nancy Fried Foster
30
five. Dream Catcher: Capturing Student-Inspired Ideas for the Libraries’ Web site
Jane McCleneghan Smith and Katie Clark
40
six. Photo Surveys: Eliciting More Than You Knew to Ask For
Judi Briden
48
seven. Mapping Diaries, or Where Do They Go All Day?
Katie Clark
55
eight. What an Experience: Library Staff Participation in Ethnographic Research
Helen Anderson and Ann Marshall
63
nine. Then and Now: How Today’s Students Differ
Sarada George
72
ten. The Mommy Model of Service
Nancy Fried Foster
79
eleven. Conclusion: Creating Student-Centered Academic Libraries
Susan Gibbons and Nancy Fried Foster
84
References
88
Author bios
Why do students still use the computers in the
library when we know they all have one in their
dorm rooms? Why is there a steady stream of stu-
dents coming in the library door at 9 P.M.? Simple
mapping diaries turned out to be a rich source of
information about these and other student behav-
iors with implications for academic libraries.
In our project to discover how undergraduate
students worked (i.e., wrote papers) and lived,
we used a variety of techniques to gather infor-
mation including interviewing students about
their paper research and writing techniques,
visiting dorm rooms to see what they had on
their computers, and giving students disposable
cameras with which to take pictures of their
environment (see Chapter 6). We also asked the
students to keep a “mapping diary” and record
where they went during a schoolday, which is
the focus of this chapter. Fourteen students kept
these diaries, and the results were surprising.
Background
One of the great challenges of studying students
is getting access to them when they are actually
doing their academic work.Their most productive
hours tend to be outside the librarian’s normal
workday. Moreover, students do much of their
academic work in their dorms, friends’ rooms,
lounges, student centers, and even empty class-
rooms. Further complicating our task, students
approach their academic work and their social
lives as one integrated collection of activities. To
understand how students research and write their
papers, we needed to understand how they fit
their paper-writing activities into the overall flow
of their lives, as they move from place to place
and activity to activity, throughout the campus
and throughout the day.
Anthropologist Michael Moffatt (1989),
who conducted seminal research on college
life at Rutgers University, asked students to
draw maps of the university campus to help
him understand their cultural construction
of the landscape. For our project, we melded
Moffat’s approach with another anthropologi-
cal technique, the time allocation study, which
we knew through the work of Daniel Gross
(1984). We gave students a map of the campus
and key surrounding areas and asked them to
mark their movements on this map, indicating
when they arrived at each place and when they
left it. Te resulting maps gave us a record of
how fourteen
individual students spent an ac-
tual day of their lives.
Procedures
We recruited our first group of nine students in
the fall of 2005 through other research activities
in our project. For example, students who par-
ticipated in our interviews or design workshops
were randomly asked whether they would be
willing to take a map and, for a $10 research
subject reward, mark down their movements
over the course of one day and then allow us to
seven. Mapping Diaries, or Where Do They Go All Day?
Katie Clark is Director, Carlson Science and Engineering Library at the University of Rochester; e-mail:
kclark@library.rochester.edu
Katie Clark
48
Mapping Diaries, or Where Do They Go All Day?
49
conduct a ten-minute debriefing when they re-
turned the completed map. We gave the student
full-color, 11- by 17-inch maps of campus and
asked them
to record where they went during
a weekday as they were actually experiencing it
(see Fig. 7.1). These diaries recorded the times
and sequence of each event.
After the students
completed their maps, they were interviewed by
the River Campus Libraries’lead anthropologist.
The interviews were tape-recorded and later
transcribed.
In a second round of diaries, we wanted to
target students who lived off campus. In fall
2006, we posted flyers in the science and engi-
neering library inviting students who lived off
campus to keep a mapping diary. As with the
first round of mapping diaries, we interviewed
the five students about their maps and tran-
scribed the interviews.
Across the two rounds of diaries, our re-
cruitment methods yielded a varied group of
students, both male and female, from fresh-
men to upperclassmen, and in a wide range of
majors.
Sample Diary
It is hard to describe a “typical”
student day, but the following
timeline—of a busy senior ma
-
joring in a scientific field—is
representative. Like the major-
ity of University of Rochester
students, he lives on campus.
The information in this time-
line comes from the interview
conducted with the student. We
have removed identifying infor-
mation (Kaplan 2006).
8:30 A.M.: Leaves his
dorm and goes to the main
campus computer center,
located on the ground
floor of the main humanities and social
sciences library, to finish up some
homework for the day.
11:00 A.M.: Goes from the computer
center to a classroom building to meet
with a professor
during office hours to
discuss classwork.
12:30 P.M.: Goes to a political science
class in a second classroom building.
1:40 P.M.: Walks back to first classroom
building to talk with the same professor.
Te student works in the professor’s lab,
so this time they talk about his job, not
his class.
2:00 P.M.: Goes back to the computer
center again to meet a group of friends
and do homework. Tey like the
mezzanine level of the computing center,
which has large eight-seater tables and
chairs—“It’s good place to do group
study.”
Figure 7.1. Student mapping diary
50
Studying Students: The Undergraduate Research Project at the University of Rochester
back and forth across our relatively small cam-
pus (Kaplan 2006).
What Did We Learn?
Although each student’s diary was unique, by
examining all fourteen we began to see some
commonalities:
1. Students do more than just attend class-
es.
Even when students report going to one or
more classes, they participate in a surprising
number of other activities. Te number and
variety of different activities seem notable espe-
cially given that this reflects the movements of
only fourteen students. In addition to going to
class, our fourteen students
• Went to science and engineering labs
• Went to language conversation lab
• Went to recitation
• Had jobs
• Studied, read, and did homework
• Met professors during office hours
• Went to the gym to work out
• Practiced fencing
• Practiced karate
• Rode their bikes
• Walked or biked or took the bus to class
• Ran
• Ate at campus dining facilities, in their
dorm, at home, on the bus, in class, at
work, in the library, in the lab, off campus
• Checked their mail at the campus post
office
• Went to the registrar’s office
• Met friends to study with at the library
and the computer center
• Studied by themselves at the library
• Checked e-mail at the computer center
• Met with tutors at the writing center
• Went to jazz rehearsal
• Practiced clarinet
• Participated in clubs
• Attended sorority and fraternity events
3:00 P.M.: Walks back to his dorm room
for a quick meal. He is not on a meal
plan but has a fridge in his room. He eats
quick prepackaged food that he can “go in
and grab” for lunch.
3:25 P.M.: Walks from dorm to classroom
building for class.
4:40 P.M.: Goes from one classroom to
another in the same building for a third
class.
6:00 P.M.: Walks to another classroom
building for third class in a row, the
fourth class of the day.
7:00 P.M.: Walks back to a previous
classroom building to work on an
assignment.
7:30 P.M.: Back to his dorm room, not to
eat dinner, but to change clothes for the
gym.
7:45 P.M.: Walks to the campus athletic
center and works out at the gym for 45
minutes.
8:30 P.M.: Back to dorm to shower.
9:00 P.M.: Goes to science and
engineering library to meet a couple of
other people and study.
12:30 A.M.: Goes back to his dorm and
finally eats dinner.
Using a scaled map of the campus, we mea-
sured the distances from building to building,
“as the crow flies,” to calculate how far the
student walked. In this actual day, this student
covered approximately 2.5 miles just walking
Mapping Diaries, or Where Do They Go All Day?
51
• Watched television in their dorm room
• Attended lectures at nearby colleges
• Went off campus to eat and shop
• Attended church services
Some of these activities—such as going to
a lab or to work—do not surprise us. Other
activities do. For example, many students who
completed maps indicated that they exercise.
Some got up early to go to the gym or run.
One did karate for several hours in the evening.
In addition, the students walked a considerable
distance crisscrossing campus. Te University
of Rochester is a heavily residential campus,
and though a few students did go off campus
to shop, eat, or attend lectures at a nearby col-
lege, the majority stayed on campus all day and
walked sometimes several miles on the day they
mapped out.
2. Students are highly scheduled and on the
go all the time.
Our students are on the run all
day and many of them late into the night. Te
majority of students we interviewed left their
dorm rooms early in the morning and did not
return until after dinner. Many checked their e-
mail during breaks between classes. Some of the
freshmen went back to their dorm briefly, most
of them just to drop off books and pick up what
they needed for the next part of the day. Tey
had little down time according to their diaries
and interviews. For example, one student said,
“Generally on a typical day I leave [dorm room]
in the morning and I won’t go back unless I for-
get something until the evening.”
3. Students’ schedules are “offset” from
librarians’ schedules.
Most of us are at our
best between 8
A.M. and 8 P.M. and at full con-
centration between 11
A.M. and 1 P.M. Students
who competed maps were up at 8
A.M. but on
the go until 1 or 2
A.M. In fact, only two of the
students we interviewed got up later than 8:30
.
Two students were exercising (running or in
the gym) by 7 A.M. But, more important, not
only are they awake much later than most li-
brarians (at least this author) are, they did pro-
ductive work long after we had left the library.
Our analysis of the maps leads up to conclude
that students’ peak concentration time is much
later than ours, typically between 10 P.M.
and
1 A.M. Tey do some work such as finishing
up homework for class during the day, mostly
at odd hours between classes; but their con-
centrated work blocks are after 10 P.M. As one
student commented, “I think it’s pretty typical.
You always end up doing most of your work in
the library late at night. Not necessarily that
late, but definitely in the evening hours is when
most people do the serious studying. You might
do a little bit before classes, but you don’t get
serious until after dinner usually.”
4. Students eat on the go.
Most students
who completed the mapping diaries did not eat
regular meals. Tey ate at odd times, often just
snacking wherever they were. Few of them ate
more than one “real” meal during their typical
day on the run. Tey brought food with them
to eat in the library, in lab, in class, on the bus,
and at work. Fond memories of sitting down
with everyone in our dorm in the dining hall
and eating dinner together have long faded.
What we see now is that students eat quick
meals of such prepackaged food as oatmeal
in their dorm rooms. When they do eat a real
meal, most of them do so on campus. In our
mapping group, few students left campus to eat
or had food delivered.
5. Students carry their belonging with
them, but not their laptops.
Students reported
carrying stuff with them during the day—ev
-
erything from books and notebooks to food,
energy drinks, and even a bike frame for use
in a presentation. One student we interviewed
carried his clarinet because he used the music
52
Studying Students: The Undergraduate Research Project at the University of Rochester
practice rooms in a building on campus and
did not want to take the time to go back to his
apartment off campus. Some of the freshmen
popped back to their dorm rooms to pick up
textbooks for their next class or change clothes
before they went to the gym. What they did
not carry with them were their laptops. None
of the students we interviewed brought their
laptops with them from the dorms. Te stu-
dents explained that they were too heavy to lug
all over campus and, because of their value, it
was very inconvenient to keep them secure, as
was confirmed by several of the student inter-
views:
Student:
I don’t need my laptop, just
‘cause I base everything that I—anything
that I’m going to need on campus, I’ll just
send to my e-mail account so I can just
access it right away. But other than that,
it is easier to just keep my backpack full
of my books and binders, and it’s not too
heavy.
Interviewer:
Do you carry your laptop
around ever?
Student:
No, well not never, but this
entire year I carried it around three or
four times because it weighs a ton. I
should have bought a better one.
6. Students use computer technology
throughout the day and in multiple loca-
tions.
Although the students do not carry their
laptops with them, they did use such technol-
ogy all throughout the day. Tey depended on
the computers in the computer lab and in the
library to check e-mail and to use them to “do
homework.”
7. Students study in the library, at home/in
their dorms, and in the computer lab.
Te
majority of students reported doing at least
some studying during the day at the library.
“Library is really the center of everything you
do. It’s where you go between classes, it’s like
... it serves as the function of your room. It’s
where you go between classes when you are not
eating. You are only in your room really in the
morning and when you go to bed.”
Te preva-
lence of the library may have been in part be-
cause some of our recruitment strategies pulled
from library users. Other study locations were
mentioned, including dorm rooms, the campus
computing center, in classroom buildings, at
their job, in the lab, and at the student union.
8.Tere is no “average” day for a student.
Of
course, we have to be careful to generalize too
much from these diaries because there is no “av-
erage” day. Tese days were described variously as
“my easy day,”“the day I’m totally slammed,” and
“a really, busy day.”Te students indicated that
their class, work, and social schedules vary from
day to day. None of our diaries reflected student
activities on the weekends, which also would be
interesting to learn about.
Implications for Academic Libraries
It has been interesting for us just to know more
about what students do during the day, but these
observations also have important implications for
our library facilities and services.
Study Space
We learned that most students do study in the
library, and that many of them view the library
as the “center” of their day. This means that our
library facilities need to accommodate all the dif-
ferent activities students are trying to do during
they day.They want a place to study,to check their
e-mail,to meet their friends,to read,to write their
papers, to kill time between classes, and to eat.
Their ideal library would allow them to do all of
these things easily under one roof.
Mapping Diaries, or Where Do They Go All Day?
53
We learned from the interviews that stu-
dents prefer a variety of settings to study in,
depending on what kind of activity they are
doing. Sometimes they are in the library for
a long period of time, sometimes only briefly.
Some students like to work at big tables with
friends; others spread their work out in a quiet
area or confine themselves in the solitude of
a small study carrel. Tere are students who
work quietly with friends and others who want
to talk and laugh with their friends. No one
size fits all. Consequently, libraries need to be
mindful of this and try to provide students with
a variety of environments to support their aca-
demic work preferences, which include spaces
to accommodate social times and breaks.
Because we saw that students wanted a va-
riety of different kinds of study space, we cre-
ated a webpage that details the different kinds
of spaces to be found in the main library.
1
Te
page lists quiet places, collaborative places,
comfy seats, public workstations, electrical out-
lets for laptops, and future spaces. Moreover,
our observation that no one size fits all led us
to seek more feedback from students about
their space needs. To help with the design of a
major renovation in the main humanities and
social sciences library, we ran two design work-
shops in which we asked students to draw their
ideal library space (see Chapter 4).
Technology
Although students carried all kinds of things with
them,including a bike frame,none of the students
we interviewed carried a laptop. This does not
mean that they are without computer access dur-
ing the day.Students used computers in the library
and campus computing labs. They checked their
e-mail, did homework, looked up articles, used
a program to turn in their math homework, and
just “browsed.”Over the past few years,our library
has discussed getting rid of our public computers,
because “every student has a laptop.”Yes, most of
them do have laptops, but we saw clearly through
the diaries that they still expect us to provide them
with desktop computing support.
We confirmed that students do a lot of their
academic work from their dorm rooms. Tis
serves to reinforce our commitment to making
as many library resources as possible available
electronically and remotely.
It also was clear that students do not under-
stand that the computer lab, which is housed in
the physical library building, is not part of the
library. It is obvious to library and computing
staff that the two entities are different, but not
to students. We now understand a little bet-
ter why students are confused, surprised, and
sometimes disappointed when the library com-
puters do not have the same software and func-
tionality as the workstations in the computer
center. Because of this project, providing access
to an identical desktop and suite of services
became a top priority for the library and will be
fully implemented by the fall 2007 semester.
Food and Drink
We learned that undergraduates often eat on the
run. The libraries at the University of Rochester
have allowed food and drink in the building
for many years. After reviewing these interview
transcripts, we wonder whether our open food
and drink policy might be a contributing factor
to the heavy use made of the library, especially by
undergraduates. One could easily imagine that, if
food and drink were not allowed in the library, it
would be a much less attractive and convenient
place for undergraduates to come to work, study,
or hang out.
Hours of Service
We learned quite a bit from these interviews that
can help us better understand how students use
the reference desk. We know that students come
to the reference desk in the evening, looking for
articles for a paper that is due tomorrow. Are they
54
Studying Students: The Undergraduate Research Project at the University of Rochester
all procrastinators? Probably some are, but that
is only part of the answer. Instead, it is clear that
students are very scheduled and on the go all day.
They may not have any free time until 9 P.M. or
later to come and ask a reference librarian for help,
but unfortunately 9 P.M.is typically when our refer-
ence desks close. Many, if not all of us, have seen
a decrease in the number of face-to-face reference
questions. Could it be that undergraduates do not
ask us questions at the reference desk because we
are not staffing the desk when (and where) they
are writing their papers,that is,after nine at night?
How can they come ask a question at the reference
desk which typically closes at nine? How can they
attend a library workshop typically offered during
the afternoon when they are already so busy during
the day? Many library services, with the exception
of circulation, which is open from early in the
morning (8 A.M.) until early the next morning (3
A.M.),are clearly out of step with students’schedules
and require some careful reconsideration.
We have made some changes in response
to what we learned from the mapping diaries.
For example, we were struck by the disconnect
between the hours of reference service and the
time of day when students do their work. Our
response was to establish Night Owl Librar-
ian service, which extended our reference desk
hours several nights a week during the busiest
weeks of the semester (see Chapter 3). We felt
it was important to try to provide reference
service at the time of day when students could
more easily use it.
Support for Students Who Live off Campus
The students who live off campus have several dif-
ferent strategies for storing their belongings. One
student e-mails everything to himself so he does not
need to carry his laptop with him.Two of the stu-
dents had on campus jobs and used their offices as
their home away from home.One of these students
stashes books, food, silverware, and even interview
clothes at her workplace; the other goes back to his
workplace several times a day to pick up things: “I
sort of live there [at work], it is sort of my home. I
leave all my books and everything I don’t need and
I go back and pick it up anytime I want.”
Again, providing computer access, allowing
food and drink, and probably providing a place
to store books and coats would better support
the students who live off campus. Long before
we conducted this study, the science and engi-
neering library purchased textbooks for reserve.
Reflecting on what we have learned, it has
probably been very helpful for students to find
their textbooks in the library rather than hav-
ing to lug them with them from home or from
their dorm rooms.
Conclusion
When we started this project, we knew very little
about what undergraduates did during the day
other than go to class and come to the library.
We did not have a sense for what their schedules
or days were like. After asking fourteen students
to keep track of their daily activity on a campus
map and following up with an in-person inter-
view, we have a much better sense of their lives.
They are busy and heavily scheduled. They get
up early but do not start their academic work
until late at night.
Tese mapping diaries are just one piece of
the larger Undergraduate Research Project un-
dertaken by the River Campus Libraries. Our
overarching goal was to understand how students
“do their work,” and this included when and
where they study.Tese mapping diaries proved
to be a rich source of insight about student lives
and have led directly to some initial changes to
be more responsive to our students’ needs.
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