What I think about it once is done, what went well, what I had struggled with and what ideas I got from working on it.
This is the last thing I am writing before submitting my project for an assessment.
This has been the most difficult unit on the PgCert course for me. I have never done any action project research (ARP) or used any primary research techniques. However, looking back at what I have achieved, I have to say that I am very pleased that I had this opportunity to learn by means of the ARP.
My project did not run very smoothly. I had started with a very different idea of what I was going to do to what I have done. My initial idea was to design an Information Literacy (IL) session and work with the students as the participants in my research. I spent at least two weeks working towards making that project happen before realising that it makes a bigger sense to start with myself as a librarian. When reading about ARP’s cycles I thought, hang on, I need to start in the beginning. Once I knew that I will be working with my team for this project I think I was on track.
What worked for me in this project was how it motivated me to work on my skills as a teacher. I gained more knowledge about my professional subject area and gained a new way of thinking about my role as a librarian. Learning how IL skills can empower anyone regardless of race, nation or social status was alone worth doing this project. Learning that IL is improving our sustainability by teaching us more effective use of information was a bonus too. This inspired me and brought lots of satisfaction in my job and everyday life too.
Additionally, it created this great opportunity for my team to work together and learn from each other. We are already using my focus group findings to design our next session for the students. We are going to use more formats of resources then usual and will try to engage the students’ voice in the session more, by being participants in the session ourselves.
Time management had been an issue for me. I spent so much time reading about my topic and research methods, then planning my actions, that I did not have enough time to record all my finding in the blog. I have done lots of writing anyway, so maybe that does not work against me in the end. However, I did not leave as much time as I would have wanted for gathering data and its analysis. I believe it went as well as it could, but if I was to do this again, I would have started taking some action a bit earlier into the project.
In terms of the research methods, I think I chose the right ones for my project. I got useful data from my questionnaire and the focus group. I definitely got answers to my question on how to improve our teaching of critical thinking about resources. I think the part of my research question that I got least data on was the sustainability element of the teaching. I did gather lots of secondary data on Sustainable Information Literacy and my knowledge of the subject is constantly broadening (I have a training session on eco-literacy library toolkit planned this term and I continue engaging with the literature on the topic), however, there was not much space left for this in my primary research. I may have packed too much into one research question, but at the same time it was worth researching. I feel better equipped now to put sustainability into any session I run. My secondary resources motivated me to learn more and gave me some ideas how to action teaching about sustainability within the IL.
The project gave me idea for the next one, so the cycle continues. I want to engage the students now to evaluate our teaching and ask them how we could improve it, so it is going to be more relevant to them.