Lisa Becksford is the Head of Learning Design Initiatives at Virginia Tech’s Newman Library. She’s passionate about empowering students to achieve their educational goals and facilitates learning experiences that help students grow as researchers and scholars. She serves as the liaison for Education and Engineering Education and collaborates with others in the library on online learning and instructional design initiatives, including the Odyssey learning object repository. 

As an instruction librarian, I teach others about conducting research, whether that’s searching in library databases, managing citations, or evaluating sources. Until a few years ago, I relied mostly on my undergraduate and graduate research experiences as a baseline for identifying with students and bringing my experiences into my teaching. In 2019, however, I began the first extended research project of my career. In this post, I’ll reflect on how the experience of becoming a researcher has transformed my teaching. 

My Research and Teaching Context

As an instruction librarian, I had long been curious about the teacher identity of instruction librarians. In 2019, I applied for and was accepted to the Institute for Research Design in Librarianship, and as part of that experience I designed a research project to study this subject. I conducted a literature reviewLiterature Review The process of summarizing, synthesizing and/or critiquing literature around a specific topic/idea. This work can help a researcher understand what has happened before and also how past research intersects and or diverges from other research. A literature review can be a full-length manuscript or a subsection within a larger research article., designed and distributed a survey, and analyzed the survey data. I’ve since completed the project and published two articles about it (view them here and here). 

Although my work as a librarian revolves around research, “teacher” has been a core part of my professional identity for far longer than “researcher” has been. I’m currently the liaison to Virginia Tech’s School of Education and the Engineering Education program, both of which have large doctoral programs whose students make up the bulk of my teaching and consultations. I primarily teach things like database searching and citation managers, but in the last few years I’ve also been encountering questions about literature reviews, data analysis, and research methods. I wasn’t necessarily expected to be an expert or to teach these additional things, but I needed to be able to answer basic questions or point students to those who could. 

Incorporating My Research into My Teaching

I never expected that my research would carry over into my teaching. When I was asked to teach a session for a literature review class in the School of Education in fall 2019, I needed an example topic. I had not worked with this class before, and I wanted to show the connection between database searching and literature reviews and how a narrative literature review develops. I realized that rather than trying to make up an example, my research – which I was then in the thick of conducting – could be the example. So I talked through the process of how I went from idea to research questions, to database searching, to crafting the literature review. Students responded really well to this example, so I’ve continued to bring my research as an example into my teaching and consultations, in varying degrees of detail depending on the context. 

Benefits

Beyond just students’ positive responses, there have been many other benefits to incorporating my research experience into my teaching. First, conducting research deepened my understanding of students’ research experiences. As a librarian I’ve read many articles about students’ research habits, and I use our library resources every day, but it was very different using them as a researcher who was really invested in her own project. I knew about the flaws of these tools and the things that often cause users to struggle, but those things affected me more when I was the one doing the research instead of teaching it. In addition to our databases, I also used research support services offered by my library, such as our data managementData management The ways a researcher collects, organizes, stores, and accesses data they collect for research. Creating a data management plan allows a researcher to know what data they will be collecting and how they will store and organize it during the research project. experts. I’m able to point students to them not only as their colleague but also as someone who has worked with them before, and I always make sure I note that I have worked with them for my own research and how helpful they have been. Now I also have an authentic teaching example that is really helpful for showing students the connection between database searching and the rest of a research project. I’ve been fortunate in that my interest in teacher identity is one that seems to resonate with the students I work with as fellow social science researchers, but I think sharing my research as part of my instruction would help students from a variety of disciplines develop a multifaceted understanding of academic librarians’ roles. 

I’ve also had to take my own advice, which is a humbling experience. I’m sure we all dispense tips and tricks to students, but when I started following my own guidance, I was able to see what was truly helpful and where I was wrong or oversimplifying things. I am also able to show my real-life citation manager and give practical examples about using these tools, and in some cases I’ve discovered new ways of using a tool like Zotero that I’m able to share with students. In order to publish my research, I navigated the scholarly publishing landscape, not just as a knowledgeable insider but as someone who was very interested in getting published herself, with the added pressure of needing publications in order to receive continued appointment and promotion. I had to select a journal, navigate peer review, and make multiple revisions, and now I find that I can talk about this process with a deeper understanding of how difficult it can be. 

This whole project also required a new set of skills beyond database research. I was doing quantitative researchQuantitative research Research that collects and analyzes numerical data in order to test a hypothesis, discover correlations, or describe characteristics.    and statistical analyses that I had thought I’d never do, and I didn’t really know what I was doing, especially at the beginning. When I began my research project a few years into my career as a librarian, I had already forgotten what it’s like to be a beginning researcher. My research project put me right back in beginner territory, albeit a beginner with a well-developed toolbox of skills. Since working on this project, I’ve found that I have more empathy and can relate better to students who are struggling with research, and I’m less likely to offer overly simple solutions to their struggles. Additionally, when students have the chance to see me not just as a librarian but as a fellow researcher, they are less intimidated and seem more willing to ask questions. Being a researcher has also allowed me to bring another aspect of myself to the teaching context. I’ve often struggled, especially with one-shots, to bring more than just “Lisa the Librarian” to the session, but talking about my research experience allows me to share something I’m deeply invested in beyond my librarian identity.

Bringing Your Research into Your Teaching

If you’re already a researcher, I encourage you to bring that to your teaching where it’s appropriate. It doesn’t need to be a huge research project, it doesn’t need to be in the exact same discipline as the students you’re working with, and it doesn’t need to be something that pushes you as far out of your comfort zone as my project did. But bringing your research to your teaching is a great way to connect with students and remember what it’s like to be a beginning researcher.  

If you’re not conducting research but you’re interested in doing so, think about how conducting research could impact your teaching. If your job doesn’t require research or you’re facing opposition from your supervisor because they don’t want to give you the time to conduct research, its potential impact on your teaching could help change their mind. 

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_{Photo by Suzanne D. Williams on Unsplash.}

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_{This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.}

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_{The expressions of the writers do not reflect anyone’s views but their own.}