A Coordinated Approach to Information Literacy: Expanding the Boundaries of the Traditional Research Writing Classroom and the University Libraries

William Magrino | Rutgers University

April 28, 2022

A close, ongoing collaboration has been occurring at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey between the Business & Technical Writing Division of our Writing Program and the University Libraries. This partnership has been precipitated by a number of factors, primarily: a lack of research preparation among our incoming students, a proliferation of available online resources, and general departmental budgetary concerns. As a result, a variety of instructional efforts have taken place to enhance the role of the libraries in our research writing courses. Due to our efforts, the information and digital literacies of our students have expanded with the changing needs of our professional writing courses.

In the fields of Business & Technical Writing, Information Literacy (IL) has become exceptionally vital because of the nature of the subject matter and the variety of documents and projects in which our students are engaged, as well as the media used to produce their projects. In the twenty-first century, as they enter their professional settings upon graduation, our students are expected to be prominent in these skills. Additionally, they are expected to be able to apply these concepts in “real-world” contexts.

At the Rutgers Writing Program, we designed a heuristic known as the Six P’s to guide our students through the development of their proposals as well as help them identify the types of research required throughout the process. The patron, of course, is the funding source they have identified as the appropriate funder for their project. The population is the specific group of people who will benefit from the proposal. The problem is the issue that needs to be addressed. The paradigm is the scholarly justification, based on both theory and models, for their plans. The plan is the step-by-step delineation of the appropriate course of action. The price is the final budget for each project. As students work their way through the Six P’s, which takes up the bulk of a semester-long course, they move from primary, into secondary, and then scholarly research.

My recent findings about the contemporary undergraduate student, which I collectively termed in previous publications as “the myth of the digital native,” (Magrino & Sorrell, 2013, 2014, 2019) guided the measures taken. Twenty-first century university instructors often assume a higher level of fluency with digital media than is present among our current student population.

The Rutgers Writing Program offers a substantial amount of support to our instructors and students. In coordination with the libraries, we added information literacy components to these support structures, both in-person and online. These are five of the most successful collaborative measures I embarked upon with the Rutgers instructional librarians:

Restructuring of Instructor Orientations and Student Library Research Sessions

At the beginning of each semester, the program holds an orientation for all instructors. Our first change to this process involved extending an invitation to the librarian to speak at each orientation and discuss our common goals and, subsequently, inform the instructors of changes – especially to our online resources such as the library course guides. These orientations also provide an opportunity for instructors to schedule their face-to-face library orientations with the librarian for each of their classes.

Maintenance of Online Course Resources and Tutorials for Students and Instructors

Business & Technical Writing has adopted a triangulated approach to online resources. These materials are used for coordination at the level of the course, each section, and the individual student assignments. We offer a dynamic repository of materials on our Learning Management System (LMS) as well as maintain a presence on social media. All instructors, students, tutors, and tutees have access to these materials, and are welcome to contribute. Our proposal writing courses also use textbooks that we developed specifically for our needs. In our coordination with the library, especially in the development of the online library guide, we followed this model of triangulation in attempt to integrate the resources seamlessly with our other materials. In this way, the classroom exercises, the course texts, and the instruction received at the libraries all function in support of one common goal.

Creation of New Course Assignments Based on Course Redesign

Analytical thinking and writing work in tandem with research, as library resources are directly integrated with course materials. Our first step in course redesign was to formalize the statement of problem that students need to develop early in the process. We replaced a brief description of the issue that was to be addressed with the composition of a formal White Paper, which carefully documents and quantifies the issue under investigation, with both primary and secondary sources.

Use of Online Mind Mapping in Assisting Students in Planning Throughout the Research Process

We integrated mind mapping software into our proposal writing courses, specifically in tracing the interdependence of the various parts of the research proposal. Faculty members are trained in our orientation sessions about the commercially available mind mapping programs and the means by which this should be integrated in the classroom activities and discussion. We discovered that these mind maps work best when they are used throughout the course of the semester, continually evolving as students develop their proposals and continuously return to their research.

Creation of an Online Library Research Guide for Proposal Writing Classes

One of the drawbacks of previous attempts at library instruction was the lack of a common vocabulary. There was a significant disconnect between the concepts of the course and the language of information literacy. While the concept of the Six P’s does provide a sequential model for our students to operate within, it also serves as a common vocabulary between our course and the libraries. The library guide is publicly accessible and optimized for mobile devices. The library guides for these courses were constructed upon the Six P’s, with resources categorized under each ordered heading.

Conclusion

In order to expand the information and digital literacies of our students, the Rutgers Writing Program has created in-person and online resources that enhance the role of the libraries in our research writing courses. Ideally, a feedback loop of research and revision has been created for our student population as they are engaged in their research. As I have established throughout, it is imperative to use online and social media platforms in conjunction with one another, as well as to integrate these materials closely into the course curriculum and other university-wide tools.

William Magrino is an Associate Teaching Professor at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick and served as Director of Business & Technical Writing at their New Brunswick campus from 2007-2020. He holds a PhD in English Literature and frequently presents his research at international conferences on topics concerning literature, pedagogy, professionalism, and administration. An active scholar, Dr. Magrino is a contributor to New Paths to Raymond Carver, published by the University of South Carolina Press, and the recently released Trump Fiction, from Lexington Books.

Dr. Magrino is the author of two professional writing textbooks with Kendall Hunt, now in their fifth editions. Business and Professional Writing: From Problem to Proposal and Scientific and Technical Writing: From Problem to Proposal have served as the main resources for the two most popular professional writing courses at Rutgers for more than a decade and have since been adopted at colleges and universities around the world.

In addition, Dr. Magrino co-authored three peer-reviewed articles with Dr. Peter Sorrell examining the pedagogical implications of social media, all derived from previous conference presentations. Their most recent article, adapted from a conference presentation, appears in the spring, 2019 issue of Interdisciplinary Humanities. Predictive of the current educational moment, “The Kids Aren’t Alright: Teaching the Personal and Professional of Social Media,” is a glance back at the past decade of teaching with and about social media, as well as a prescient look forward to the myriad opportunities afforded the composition instructor within these virtual spaces. Dr. Magrino’s current research examines the promise and pitfalls associated with “remote” teaching in the post-COVID academic world.

A Coordinated Approach to Information Literacy: Expanding the Boundaries of the Traditional Research Writing Classroom and the University Libraries

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