Doug Brent article highlighted on international library list-serv

The ILI-L listserv is extremely popular in the library field with thousands of subscribers worldwide, mostly from academic libraries. So, it was a pleasant surprize when the following post appeared last week. Barbara Fister (the poster) writes prolifically about information literacy and is very well-respected in the field, so I'm sure Doug will earn a large following of librarian fans as a result of this recommendation for his paper.

Hello, listmates -

I just bumped into a very interesting article, well worth a read - Doug Brent. "Using an Academic Content Seminar to Engage Students with the Culture of Academic Research." Journal of the First Year Experience and Students in Transition 18(1) 2006: 23-54. There's a draft copy on Doug's homepage - the first link under "Papers on Rhetoric and Composition Studies." (He's seriously into self-archiving!) http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/%7Edabrent/mystuff.html

He interviewed students about their reseaarch experience in a first term seminar context and their perspective is very interesting, both in terms of the differences they perceive between high school and university research expectations and what sort of experience engages them most when doing research. There's also a discussion of different types of first year seminars that is valuable - I hadn't realized the extent to which the purposes and nature of these courses varies by design.

Might be worth sharing with your first year seminar director, if you have such a thing on your campus.

Barbara