Faculty and staff involved in teaching undergraduate students often face a strange paradox: the students are immersed in online technologies to the point that texting, using search engines and blogging are second nature to them – yet they are apparently unable to use any of this to access the vast amount of easily-available online information and produce an original research paper. In The New Digital Scholar editors McClure and Purdy have marshalled an array of writing academics, librarians and researchers to address this paradox. Working from a premise that traditional information literacy (IL) teaching practices do not always work for students who have grown up in an Internet-saturated environment, the various authors describe the characteristics of NextGen students, then identify solutions to the resulting issues that arise when teaching them the art of research writing.
The first half of the book begins with McClure arguing for an information behavior approach to studying NextGen students: examining what students actually do in the practice of IL skills and the factors influencing their behaviours. Subsequent chapters review the literature on the history of the research paper assignment, the connection between instruction in IL and writing and the nature of learning in an online environment. Several studies of NextGen students are also presented, notably the Citation Project, which reveals startling patterns in student citation practices. The second half of the book presents suggestions on dealing with NextGen students. Classroom teaching ideas range from research assignments that use the skills NextGen students already have to the use of collaborative projects to promote a self-perception of being knowledge workers. Broader programmatic approaches are also presented, e.g. collaborative teaching by writing instructors and librarians, or usability testing to understand student use of online libraries.
Numerous themes arise repeatedly throughout the book. For instance, NextGen students already have search skills that they use in their everyday lives but do not recognize them as such, seeing scholarliness as a completely separate pursuit. This can be addressed by, for instance, promoting a view of research writing as a conversation with – rather than a verification of – existing scholarly material, a non-linear process where research and writing are usually concurrent activities. Despite NextGen students’ familiarity with online resources, the sheer sophistication of library databases can be a barrier to their use compared with the familiar simplicity of Google, so why not find new ways to introduce students to these tools – or re-design the library webpage? NextGen students already evaluate online information but tend to focus on how it was found (with Google versus a library database), rather than assessing each source on its own merits. Instructors need to promote deep reading rather than sentence mining, so combatting the tendency for citation instruction to become a lesson on how to avoid plagiarizing.
Far from being a call to pander to the inability of digitally-literate students to write research papers, The New Digital Scholar represents a recognition of sound teaching practice: know your students, then adapt your methods accordingly. This is still a valuable lesson in the digital age.
