Aberystwyth University
'Good Academic Practice' day
Objectives
Information Services offers a range of courses, including teaching information literacy skills within the curriculum - teaching students how to find, manage and use information effectively. Many of these take place within the libraries, but we also take the teaching out to departments where possible (both proactively and by invite), since we need to look for ways to make it an inseparable part of good academic practice rather than a message to a few. This outreach is an important part of our service which we want to develop, maximising the benefit of the help, advice and teaching we provide. 
Instead of expecting users to always come to us it makes sense to also take the teaching to where the users are, even if that sometimes means allowing learning to take place in less formal environments. Many universities already do teaching in open and flexible spaces in the library, others are looking into it. We have plans in this area but for this initiative we wanted to go further and trial something new. We therefore took the teaching to a new location (for us) - the Guild of Students, in order to reach new audiences, with a new message, in a new location.
Target audience
Students who perhaps had not attended sessions in the library, or were not frequent library users, therefore were an audience of the 'unconverted'. We would take the teaching to their location in an attempt to be as user-friendly as possible.
Summary of the project
Working with partners we put together a programme to take place on Wednesday 25th November 2009, concerned with covered various aspects of good academic practice - plagiarism, bibliographic referencing, critical use of reference sources, citation advice, and information about further support. We invited all parties with a vested interest in students' academic practice to take part, and ended up with a first for us, in that the collaboration eventually involved:

•	Librarians
•	Guild of Students staff
•	the E-learning Team
•	Academics
•	Student Support Services
•	Royal Literary Fund staff
•	Media and Printing Services staff
•	Language & Learning Centre staff

Some helped with organising, some delivered teaching, some helped run the day, others contributed their skills and time.
A lot of preparation went into co-ordinating the event and helping it to run smoothly, but also into promoting it as widely and effectively as possible. The talks were to be recorded so that the content could possibly be made available in other ways, extending the availability of the messages.
Budget
We used internal resources since there was no separate budget - so information services' equipment such as laptops, display boards and projector; Guild of Students tables and chairs; internally-designed and printed promotional material. Staff time and enthusiasm were the main currencies, and were used as effectively as possible. 
Promotional activities
We used a number of promotional elements, all linked together for a consistency of message. We had to be creative in our use of limited resources and in our attempt to reach out to the target audience.
Some innovations:

•	We carefully chose a name for the event that was a pun, but which thematically drew all the content together: "Mind the GAP - avoid pitfalls with Good Academic Practice". The corresponding visual image (from a Creative Commons source that did not require attribution) and design of the posters reinforced the central message that we can help students avoid common mistakes.
o	"Good study skills lead to better marks and make you more organised and less stressed."
o	"Good referencing and reading widely help to avoid plagiarism."
o	"Using high-quality sources of information improves the quality of your work."
•	We designed a programme flyer that was also a feedback form (partly for green reasons to save paper; it prevented clutter; and it enabled users to tick the session they attended and then just write on their comments). This design is something we hope to use again. Obviously all information was in Welsh and English, from the blog entries to the posters.
•	We used every avenue of publicity, including Web 2.0 options. Weekly emails leading up to the event; RSS feeds; displays on our information monitors; entries on two service blogs; Twitter; posters in the library and in the Guild of Students; flyers; informing departments of the event during liaison meetings; emails to the Directors of Learning & Teaching and to Information Services Representatives in departments etc. This is the first time we have used all those outlets for a single message.
•	We used the idea of an 'Information Station' ('Gorsaf Gwybodaeth'!) which would be outside of the venue where talks were taking place, and contained various types of useful information. Enthusiastic volunteers ran it with a laptop for demonstrating useful sources of information. This station was there to promote the events and explain what was going on, but also to offer informal help with aspects of good academic practice.
•	Where possible we kept the marketing and event as informal as possible - this is obvious in the choice of location (a room with a bar used for bands, music and dancing), but also in aspects such as emphasising that people could drop in and leave as they wished, they would not be trapped into staying or lambasted for dropping in partway through a session; we also did not implement any booking system for the event as an extension of this.
•	On the day we tried to get the immediacy effect. Staff made announcements about the day and the next session in computer rooms, cafes, bars, even to groups of practicing dancers to queues at cash points (i.e. anywhere with a captive audience!) Some of the students were pleasantly surprised that we were taking the time to seek them out and speak to them about sources of help and advice.

Note that as well as the way we marketed the event above, it should be remembered that the event itself was a way of marketing the library and the support services available, raising their profile. So there were two levels of promotion going on.
Evaluation
There were a number of successes, or things that went particularly well:

•	This was a first attempt at something innovative, and we learnt valuable lessons for if we repeat this event or do something similar again.
•	We raised the profile of good academic practice, information literacy, library services and other support services.
•	We developed effective partnerships between the groups listed above who where involved in preparation for the event, uniting us in a common purpose. These collaborative partnerships will be valuable in the future.
•	The Information Station proved to be very popular, with the staff running it speaking to lots of students and answering their queries. It no doubt raised the profile of a number of services available to students that can help them with their academic work.
•	All in it together: the professional and helpful attitudes of all those who were involved (including porters and bar staff in the Guild of Students) made the collaboration a pleasure. Also the way that speakers dealt with the less-than-optimal surroundings and noise without batting an eyelid, taking it all in their stride, was impressive.

The main problem with the event was that attendance was far lower than we had hoped. As anyone organising an event knows, even when you do all the right things this is a factor that we can influence but not control fully. However although fewer people attended than we had planned, the feedback from attendees was all positive. Some of the comments:

"Most useful. Thanks."

"I thoroughly enjoyed the bibliographic [session], it was in-depth advice."

"I found out some information I didn’t know which was very useful".

"Yes useful to hear how sources on the internet could be used for work".

"Wikipedia section at 10.30 till 11.00 session very useful for referencing quotes and understanding how to use it in an assignment."

"Different ideas from different tutors."

"I personally found the talks I attended interesting and useful!"

"I have actually photocopied some of the handouts for my brother who has just started university and he was very grateful, especially for the info on university rules and plagiarism!!" 

Some of the lessons learnt are listed below, and were valuable in themselves. Organising this event led to many ideas that we will use again.

•	Despite organisational imperatives, it is difficult to reach out to students unless what you offer is exactly at their point and time of need. Institutions are obviously concerned about academic standards, but for some students it only becomes a concern when they run into problems - many of them assume they already adopt good academic practice! For those students proactive events won't have an impact, and they rely on our safety net services instead.
•	By not enforcing booking we were flexible and open, but it made managing attendance more difficult. If we used booking in future it would give advance notice of attendance, and allow us to possibly move a session to a more appropriate location depending on the number of bookings, and allowing us to plan for the number of PCs/laptops needed for the hands-on sessions. Also there is the 'scarcity factor' - sometimes people don't value something just because it is free - bookings with limited places mean users will be more likely to have to consider if they will be missing out if they don't take advantage of the session.
•	The location is extremely important. Despite having visited the location for this event a few times during the planning stages, it became clear during the day when the building was in live use that it was unsuitable. The room was extremely cold that day; noise was a big issue (it was a large echoing room, conversations took place, people were playing pool etc.) It turned out the room was regularly used as a throughway to get to the back of the building - with a hard floor that echoed every step. The room would have worked well with large audiences, but because they were smaller than expected it would have been better to have been in a smaller environment more conducive to group work than a large echoing space. However part of the problem of distraction is probably inevitable if you take your teaching out to other places.
•	One has to identify as optimum a date as possible. Considerations such as whether it is an essay time or reading week; whether it suits the departments and their timetables; and even weather forecasts for wind, rain and storms are vital. A Wednesday was chosen because then students have the least lectures, therefore potentially are free to attend an event - however we later found out that although the reasoning was sound, students apparently don't visit the Guild of Students so much on those days, and the building would have perhaps been busier on a normal weekday.
•	We had requested more publicity (an entry in the weekly email and on the university website on the day itself) but due to an administrative problem this wasn't done. Web statistics showed higher hits on our event web page after each previous weekly email, so if this had gone ahead we may have seen more interest.
•	The Information Station idea was successful so we are considering re-using it on its own, with lots of leaflets of specific advice and services. We will investigate placing it inside the smaller bar/cafe at certain times as an outreach service, so that it is visible to people relaxing, rather than grabbing people on their way TO somewhere which inevitably means they will be more likely to be unwilling to stop. 
•	Following on from the deliberations about attendance and location, it has led us to consider methods to encourage bookings for scheduled skills courses. This includes a plan to make use of passing trade and a captive audience on the ground floor of the library by offering a regular presentation or demonstration on an aspect of information skills. This would be accompanied by a display with a list of courses and a computer to book online. The bookings help us to identify the sessions with most appeal to deploy resources to those effectively. The regular ground floor sessions would raise the profile of the library as a place to come to learn information skills. This could also be an opportunity for academic staff to see first hand that the library is engaged with sharing information skills with students, which may have further outcomes. 
•	Freebies? We had free pens and pads from sponsorship, but perhaps free coffee would have pulled more people in and helped to create a relaxed atmosphere. Or even free beer? (For the attendees, not the presenters). We did have limited free coffees courtesy of the Guild.
•	As a way of playing it safe it might make sense to avoid cramming everything into one day where unforeseen factors (such as a day of very cold weather) could have a greater effect. So we  are considering spreading the talks over a week, one a day - then each talk could be in an appropriate place (a PC room for hands-on workshops, an informal setting for group discussion, a lecture theatre for formal talks) rather than trying to find a 'one size fits all' solution. The Information Station could be run all week as an outreach point (as suggested above) which could also help visitors to identify and sessions that would be most relevant to them, or even to just put them in touch with the most relevant support (if they need help with referencing, we could send them to an Endnote course; for help with academic style, we would send them to the Royal Literary Fund Writers In Residence; for help with finding resources, we would send them to their subject librarian.
•	We had hoped to incorporate a vox pops idea, where we would record students talking (unscripted) about their academic experiences of academic practice (e.g. essay writing, research, referencing, experiences, problems faced - and overcome?, what it was like when they first started, and tips) in order to capture sound bites. We were then going to edit them and replay them between sessions and as an introduction to the event, as JISC did with the Learner Voices programme. Time prevented us going ahead with this but it is something we would like to do separately in the future, and is an idea that only arose as part of the marketing planning for this event. 
•	If we repeated this event we would try to work more closely with academic departments so that they perhaps timetable in the sessions for the students. possibly making it a mandatory part of the course, or in some way assessed.
Conclusion 
As noted in detail above, the lessons learnt from this event are currently being used to plan our Semester 2 information literacy sessions and will be used in our information literacy strategy and within the University. The collaborative nature of this event was essential and we will be taking forward good academic practice with partners within the University and beyond as we note the actions from the Gregynog Colloquium on Information Literacy and the work undertaken in Scotland. This was a first step in the right direction.
Supporting material
•	Photos 
•	Posters
•	Programme
•	Feedback flyer
•	Blog posts on the event: 
o	http://aberssel.blogspot.com/2009/11/mind-gap.html 
o	http://cpelaber.blogspot.com/2009/11/mabwysiadwch-arferion-academaidd-da.html