Remember, as a professor, you have spent years or decades immersed in research and honing your research skills. Your students are at the opposite end of the research spectrum. You may have forgotten the uncertainty and intimidation generated by your first few visits to a college library.

Here's a snapshot of you, the expert researcher.

"There are a number of assumptions that a skilled researcher uses when doing research. Often, they can't even articulate what they are, but they practice them. "The [expert researcher] model requires a long process of acculturation, an in-depth knowledge of the discipline, awareness of important scholars working in particular areas, participation in a system of informal scholarly communication, and a view of research as a non-sequential, nonlinear process with a large degree of ambiguity and serendipity. The expert researcher is relatively independent, and has developed his or her own personal [research] strategies." [1]

You spent years, often dozens of years, getting to know a subject. Humility and frustration are still common feelings as you discover that there is always one more level of detail that eludes you and that the knowledge-base you have created represents only an approximation of reality. However, you have accumulated a formidable storehouse of knowledge. You know who the important authors are, what books or articles are considered foundational, and who the current experts are. You have spent countless hours pursuing elusive facts, have gone back to the beginning numerous times to establish a fresh trail, know which library tools will yield the best results, and understand the pitfalls and obstacles associated with your particular intellectual pursuit. And to make the expert model even more intimidating, a portion of what you know was discovered by accident!

Students, on the other hand, are on the other end of the spectrum. They know very little about the research topic you assigned. They can't identify essential books, articles, or authors in the field. To them, ambiguity and non-linearity, accepted occupational hazards of the expert researcher, are obstacles that seriously threaten their grade. In all honesty, coping strategies are more important than a diligent and systematic inquiry into a topic! Every first year student faces this learning curve. Research is difficult and intimidating.

Hekman librarians want to help your students gain the confidence, knowledge, and skills they need to be expert researchers.  The Research@Hekman pages are designed to help your students learn some of the skills associated with research, but please contact or your liaison librarian if you would like to schedule a library session or need more assistance.

1. Leckie, Gloria J., Desperately Seeking Citations: Uncovering faculty assumptions about the undergraduate research process. The Journal of Academic Librarianship v. 22, May 1996, p.202