Researching the researcher

Yesterday was the Syracuse Writing Program’s annual Fall Teaching Conference, which might well be called “old faculty reorientation.” Every year we get together and talk about pressing issues in pedagogy and curriculum. This year our topic was our second required writing course, a sophomore-level course focused on research. We convened to consider ways to increase and enhance students’ engagement in researched writing, and we also attended to what instructional needs students have in information literacy.

I did a brief presentation on some preliminary insights from the research team of the Citation Project. We haven’t done any statistical analyses yet, but as we code students’ papers, we see again and again that they are writing from isolated sentences in their sources, rather than from the whole source. We’re also seeing wide-ranging difficulties in citing online sources, and we’re realizing afresh how challenging that job is. When I was an undergraduate writer, I worked with books, journals, magazines, and newspapers. Period. Identifying author, title, and publisher was uncomplicated. That is not the case today, and not only does it complicate citation, but more importantly, it further removes inexperienced student writers from any sort of relationship with their sources. The sources too easily become undifferentiated masses of information. Hence students seek the most concise, information-laden sources. Then they struggle to produce an argument from the data they’ve collected. It takes an expert to develop critical insights from data; new scholars need other scholars’ perspectives as a way of getting into the complex issues that underlie the data.

As the day’s conversations unfolded, I busily took notes on my PDA. One of my favorite moments was when someone mentioned a research assignment developed by a colleague (who I think was Chris Madden-Feikes): “researching the researcher.” As I understand it, students do some preliminary research; identify an important source for their inquiry; and then research the author of that source. That’s a terrific idea, one that speaks to what we’re discovering in Citation Project research. A “researching the researcher” assignment will definitely be in my syllabus when next I teach our WRT 205; it’s a great way to press students to notice who the author is and to explore her background, context, and previous publications.