The title of this book caught my eye, when it was offered for review. “Digital scholarship” was a phrase I was familiar with from work undertaken at the Open University (e.g. see www.digitalscholarship.ac.uk/). This edited monograph has sixteen chapters exploring research and writing practices of undergraduate students in the digital age. It has contributions from writing teachers, librarians and administrators from a wide variety of US universities and colleges. The forward is written by Alison Head and Michael Eisenberg from the high-profile Project Information Literacy, which to me is the clearest indication of the focus of this book. For in my mind this is a book about information literacy (IL) and where it intersects with scholarly writing; thus many of the chapters focus on this explicitly. Other chapters focus more broadly on students’ information behavior, the writing process and the impact of digital technologies. If you define IL broadly (which I do) then academic literacies and digital literacies are all overlapping terms, and I think the phrase “digital scholarship” goes some way to unite these concepts.
Many of the chapters in this book present new research findings, even those that are written by practitioners, and each chapter is a mine of useful references and further readings. The book should appeal to education and information researchers and practitioners including teachers in higher education, librarians and learning developers. The book is divided into four sections each with four chapters. Part one sets the scene by presenting the NextGen student and the research and writing problems that they face. Part Two explores what NextGen students do in undergraduate writing classes, discussing practices such as “patch writing,” quoting and paraphrasing, citing, the use of Google and library databases. Part Three looks at pedagogic solutions to enrich the research and writing practices of students, such as undergraduate research projects, new types of research assignments and what is described as “undergraduate ethnography.” Finally Part Four looks at programmatic solutions to enriching the research and writing practices of NextGen students including strategies for teaching research and search techniques. The book starts and finishes with an introduction and conclusion from the editors.
Despite my own work on this topic, I was surprised that there were very few examples that were familiar to me. The chapters are all written by those in North American institutions and many of the reference are US centric. This is slightly disappointing given the excellent research on information and academic literacies that has been done in countries such as Australia, Scandinavia and of course the UK. That aside, I think there are some really valuable contributions in this book and it's enlightening to read a book about IL which is authored mainly by those outside the library profession. Chapters that stood out for me were Chapter 4, by Brian Ballentine entitled “Fighting for attention: making space for deep learning” which draws heavily on the work of Nicholas Carr's 2010 book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. There is a useful summary of some of the scientific studies that have explored the negative impact of technology on our attention span, on learning and the brain, but it also focuses on the new affordances that digital technologies might bring.
Chapter 5 by Sandra Jamieson and Rebecca Moore Howard explores approaches to teaching research writing. Entitled “Sentence mining” it reports on The Citation Project, which aims to uncover students’ approaches to writing, including data on instances of direct copying, paraphrasing, patch-writing and quoting. The research is based on an analysis of student papers written in first year writing courses across 16 colleges and universities. The findings suggest the teaching of research writing needs a serious overhaul to focus less on punishing students for failure to cite correctly and more on helping students engage with their sources and build arguments in their writing.
Chapter 7: Can I Google that: research strategies of undergraduate students’ by Mary Lourdes Silva also struck me as being particularly useful. Silva's chapter, which is based on her doctoral research, is an in-depth study of three undergraduate students before and after receiving IL training. She cites several writers outside the US acknowledging that “one problem with IL instruction in higher education is that teachers and librarians enforce prescriptive guidelines.” This is particularly true in the USA where the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) dominates the teaching that takes place. Meanwhile many librarians may find Chapter 11 a rather challenging read. Entitled “Embracing a new world of research” David Bailey applies the notion of the “Fourth paradigm” to the writing classroom, urging us to adopt a more open exploratory format for research that meets the needs of current students. He argues that libraries and other academic institutions need to “redefine their roles in knowledge production, consumption and communication” rather than criticize students for their lack of research skills. Bailey suggests that an environmental scanning assignment can be an effective way of engaging with NextGen students.
There are many useful resources in this book. I found the appendices in some chapters very helpful, such as James Purdy's research practices questionnaire presented in Chapter 6, which I intend to use in my own institution. Chapter 10 by Rachel Milloy on “Re-envisioning research” explores whether research assignments appeal to digital learners, and if our assignments teach students the necessary skills for researching in the digital age. Her findings on student attitudes toward research, such as the reliance on Google, problems devising keywords and information overload were sadly familiar to me. However, I found her ideas for “re-envisioning assignments” fascinating, such as using Wordles to help students devise keywords, the digital fieldwork assignment where student use tools such as social networking sites to carry our research. These assignments are outlined in her appendices in some detail, allowing others to re-use or adapt them.
One criticism I have of this book is the sheer size of it and the slightly overlapping and repetitive themes that are raised in the different chapters of the book. The conclusion to me, while extremely well written, felt a little short. I wholeheartedly supported the four suggestions presenting on pages 373-375, but surely they should be more than just suggestions? This book needs to be read by everyone who teaches in higher education as it covers many of the concerns and issues lecturers I see on a daily basis are currently grappling with. I would urge the authors to write a concise summary that can be shared more widely. My fear is that a monograph of this size might well fight for our attention in such an information rich environment. However, McClure and Purdy are to be congratulated for this rich and engaging book that is worthy of our attention and could potentially transform the way we teach research and writing in higher education.
