Within the Library, we feel it’s important to do research to inform our teaching and improve the services we offer. Our research revolves around what you, the students, think and we’d like to thank all of the students who have helped us with our research. Below are some examples of the research we’ve conducted.
The aim of this study was to determine what proportion of students at The University of Liverpool had heard of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) technologies such as Chat GPT, and whether they had ever used or considered using them for academic purposes. This research helped to inform the University’s Academic Integrity Policy on the use of GAI and also the KnowHow Academic Integrity online tutorial.
The KnowHow student team 2022-23 designed draft questions for a survey to be sent to all University students. Three KnowHow testing sessions were organised and were run by the student team to provide feedback on the survey questions before they were sent out as an online survey via Canvas and lecturers.
There were 2,555 responses to the survey which represents just under 9% of the student population at The University of Liverpool. A huge thank you to the students who took part. Results are currently being written up and we hope to publish them in a peer review journal this year.
You can read more about this research in our published article below:
The aim of this study was to explore how students would like to receive one to one writing support from our Writing@Liverpool service. Since teaching and one to one appointments moved online during the pandemic, and hybrid working/studying became common practice shortly after, we wanted to know whether students would prefer face to face or online appointments.
An online survey was sent to students via Canvas announcements and there were 701 responses. Just over half of students (55.8%) preferred a face to face appointment while 40.4% preferred online appointments. As a result, we changed our format so that tutors could offer both online and face to face appointments as there was clearly a demand for both.
You can read more about this research in our published article below:
The aim of this study was to determine why students did or did not engage with a centralised study skills service such as KnowHow. The results of which could lead to ways of improving the service which would ultimately benefit the students.
An online survey was sent to second year students via lecturers asking questions such as whether or not the students had ever heard of KnowHow or used any KnowHow resources and finally what would make students more likely to use KnowHow resources or attend sessions. One hundred and forty students completed the online survey, with 66.4% reporting that they had heard of KnowHow. Of those who had engaged with KnowHow, the vast majority had engaged with online resources and the biggest issues preventing students engaging were time and locations of sessions. These results were then followed up with a series of focus groups, with 25 students in total. The focus groups supported the opinions of the online survey with time being the biggest reason for students not engaging. Other interesting findings also included that students mostly preferred to learn through a mixture of online and face to face resources
Several of the participants suggested that having students work for KnowHow would encourage their attendance, especially if those students could answer queries. As a result of these findings, we launched a scheme whereby three students, one from each faulty, would be recruited as KnowHow student assistants each academic year. This scheme has proved popular and has given greater insight into the student perspective on KnowHow resources and sessions.
