Literature Review Workshops for Graduate Students: Helping Students on the Journey to Becoming Succe

1
Literature Review Workshops for Graduate
Students Helping Students on the Journey to
Becoming Successful Researchers Hannah Gascho
Rempel, Oregon State University
Libraries Corvallis, OR 97331
Introduction At Oregon State University
Libraries, we discovered graduate students
frequently run into several roadblocks while
writing literature reviews for their theses or
dissertations. As a result, librarians created a
workshop focusing on the literature review
process. Most graduate students, regardless of
discipline, are required to write some form of
literature review, and they are often unsure of
themselves at the beginning stages of this
writing and research process. They have
questions about how to use unfamiliar library
resources, how to organize the information they
find, how to keep up with the massive amounts of
information available, and how to begin writing
the actual literature review. Our literature
review workshop has focused on addressing these
questions. In addition, we have continued to
learn more about the OSU graduate student
population and their information needs.

• What we cover in the workshop
• Definition and purpose of the literature review
• Considering the subject specific nature of the
  literature
• Determining need for and criteria of
  comprehensiveness
• Process and strategies for conducting a
  literature review
• Learning how to read and recognize patterns in
  the literature
• Effective database searching
• Useful library services such as interlibrary
  loan
• Organizing searches and results (e.g., saving
  searches, bibliographic management software)
• Keeping up with the literature (RSS feeds, Table
  of Contents alerts, social bookmarking, search
  alerts)
• Contacts for further help and participant
  evaluation of workshop

Student Feedback This was terrific. Super
informative. What a great student
service! Great information on managing searches
and keeping current with literature!

• Steps to Creating a Successful
• Workshop Program
• Appointed a graduate student services
  coordinator
• Surveyed students to determine their information
  needs
• Decided on the Literature Review as the point
  where students wanted the most help
• Chose a workshop style
• Promoted the workshop
• Include free food!
• Included assessment (pre and post workshop)
• Continued evaluating what works (and doesnt)
• Based on feedback, we expanded our workshop into
  a series which includes other topics of interest
  to grad students

• Future Areas to Explore
• Target specific audiences within the graduate
  student body such as international students,
  older than average students, or distance
  learners.
• Offer classes for a range of skill levels, such
  as beginner, intermediate and advanced to more
  precisely target students needs
• Involve faculty, while still maintaining an open
  environment for the students to express questions
  and frustrations
• Continue to work on the post-workshop assessment
  to learn more about what students actually learn
  and what their continued needs are
• Increase thesis writing support for graduate
  students (based on requests on student evals)
• Partner with writing center, academic
  departments to explore options
• Make other library workshop offerings available
  to graduate students, including workshops
  focusing on keeping up with research, organizing
  information, and using library databases.

The presentation was delightful and
informative. This was a great workshop. Thank
you.
Acknowledgements Thanks to those who have
participated in organizing and strategizing about
the Literature Review Workshops, especially
Jeanne Davidson, Paula McMillen, and Margaret
Mellinger.