It takes the Entire University Community to Educate Students in Becoming Academics

Abstract

Development of scientific thinking is considered an essential but challenging aim of academic studies. In practice, this challenge becomes evident when students begin preparing their theses. Therefore, proper guidance combined with suitable guidance methods are needed. The staff of university libraries face this daily challenge through students’ questions, which often start as ‘what’ questions and morph into ‘how’ questions. Based on these genuine necessities, a new collaborative model to implement guidance for students was developed at the Open Science Centre, Library at Jyväskylä University, Finland. The model is constructed of three intertwined principles: 1) strengthening student agency, 2) producing diverse but explicit open access e-learning material and 3) cooperation across all academic guidance units. The learning material includes a work process that models the central stages of research, such as orientation and setup, questions, concept analysis, academic resources, search strategies, reliability and ethics. Concrete tools for planning research processes are also included in the material. Cooperation across units aims at developing a new guidance culture. This combines academic content (what) and work processes (how) and uses a multiple range of pedagogical methods and technologies for different types of training and disciplines. A model for shared guidance responsibilities is perceived as necessary to respond to students’ multiple guidance needs and to avoid the belief that it is someone else’s job to train them. Based on students’ feedback, this shared guidance model is promising, reflects true care of students, offers a safe learning environment and provides multiple resources for learning.