MLA 2014 Call for Papers

Meeting Where Students Are: Faculty-Library Collaborations and Undergraduate Research

Class assignments, group projects, senior theses or independent study are all ways that student work brings faculty and librarians together to support research in and outside of courses. In this context “research” has a number of dimension, including how students learn, the ground on which students, faculty and librarians interact, and what students produce. Out of it comes a wealth of opportunity for projects based on active- or discovery-based pedagogy.

Faculty are turning away from the traditional term-paper and toward diverse assignments drawing on the archives, manuscripts, or rare books held in libraries. Teaching students through research and critical reading encourages students to adopt a critical and creative stance toward evidence and models for them the way knowledge is made and communicated. Students are introduced to questions of interpretation and criticism, contexts for judgment, the iterative nature of research, scholarly communication processes and networks, as well as modes of collaborative work.

Librarians, academic technologists, and scholars bring their various perspectives to bear on teaching students about scholarship, and we are looking for best practices, methods, tools, model courses or activities, and lessons learned for student research as a medium for collaborative teaching and learning. Please send a 300-word abstract by March 5 to Bob Kieft (kieft@oxy.edu)