The fellowship is an amazing opportunity to explore things in depth. When I first thought of applying, I knew I needed something that would have enough within it to keep me interested and be relevant to the wider LIS sector.
As an Academic Librarian, one of the best things about my job is teaching and working with students. Every day I get the chance to learn something new, if I’m open to it. Working in a university also means I have access to incredible resources for research and continuing professional development. Whilst I’ve been at the University, I’ve tried to make the most of these opportunities. My first research project came out of my job and was facilitated by a CPD opportunity.
I work with students from foundation level, all the way through to post-doctoral research. Every student has their own experiences that help shape the way they interact with the university. I support the health programmes here and our MSc Public Health programme was growing in popularity and had increasing student numbers. These students come from all over the world and have studied a range of different courses and qualifications before coming here. There’s no ‘one’ student profile. This really interested me, where are the students coming from and what are they experiencing when they arrive at UON?
It can be quite a steep learning curve coming from undergraduate to postgraduate study. The emphasis on independent study becomes even more pronounced. Plus, you have to adjust to a new institution with different processes. If you’re coming from another country there’s even more adjustment and knowledge to take on board. I wanted to find out what it was like for our international students, what they found when they arrived and look at how I can adapt and change what I teach to better support them. It’s easy to make assumptions based on anecdotal information, but I wanted to find out what it’s really like.
Therefore, I knew who I wanted to work with (MSc Public Health international students) and I knew what I wanted to find out (what’s it like coming to UON and how do they find the information they need to support their study). Now I needed to think about the best way of exploring what I wanted to find out.
I didn’t want to do surveys – I wanted to learn about the experiences they had. So, I wanted to use a qualitative methodology. I could have used interviews or focus groups, but I wanted something that would really showcase their experience and catch people’s eyes. Research papers tend to be quite dry; they get published and then they sit in databases. The individuals involved rarely get to see what they contributed to and it doesn’t necessarily attract the attention of the key stakeholders involved: the students, their colleagues, the programme team, the wider library, and the institution.
As part of the fellowship, I get the benefit of working with a mentor (an expert in the field that can guide me through the research). When talking through my initial ideas, they suggested thinking about a visual research method, such as photovoice. I’d never heard of it before, but it was something I was really interested in finding out about. I love photographs and they are definitely eye catching. Exploring the literature around photovoice it really gave me a feel for how it has been used (initially in public health research) and then in library and information science. I could see how this would give the participants a chance to show their experience from their perspective (not ‘translated’ through my interpretation). The photographs would also be a great way of encouraging discussion between participants, seeing if there is common ground between their experiences. In participatory photography or photovoice, the participants define the main findings from the research. I would be facilitating it, but it would be the student’s voice. This was a great way of me exploring the topic.
So, I now knew how I was going to investigate – participatory photography. Taking the time to think things through, ask questions, listen to other people’s thoughts, to explore and read around ideas all helped me to choose my topic and the methods I’m going to use.
Lessons learnt:
- Keep interested, keep listening, keep learning. There is so much going on, see if there is something that can catch your attention and inspire you.
- Try something new. I’ve never done a project with a visual research method before, but it’s very exciting and I think I’m going to get a lot out of it.