Purpose:
The purpose of this research was threefold. (1) To test whether the cultural probe methodology was appropriate, applicable and workable as a methodology for investigating the impact of information skills teaching. (2) To investigate the impact of information skills teaching on new doctoral students’ information seeking behaviour. (3) To seek insight into the wider picture of the research landscape that new doctoral students occupy, so that library services and interventions could be designed to fit into students’ workflow, rather than expecting them to fit into ‘the library way’.
Design:
The design of the research was a longitudinal study over the first term (10 weeks) of the doctoral programme experience, using a cultural probe method.
Developed in 1999 by three designers [1] a cultural probe is a collection of activities and exercises that are given to members of a community with the purpose of obtaining a rich understanding of their lives, including their motivations, thoughts and behaviours, alongside their cultural and social contexts.
A key feature of the cultural probe kits is that they are designed to promote engagement and inspiration in participants in order to get them to consider their day-to-day behaviours in detail, and evaluate and reflect on their choices and actions.
Cultural probes are an exploratory methodology, in the ethnography cannon, usually used without any specific research questions in mind. This research experimented with the methodology to determine if it could be used in a more targeted way. The researcher adapted the cultural probe methodology developed by Priestner & Marshall for the Cambridge University FutureLib Project [2].
The Cambridge study employed the methodology over an intensive two-week period, requiring 20 minutes per day of participants’ time, followed by a 90 minute interview. This study adapted the methodology to be less intensive, requiring 10 minutes of participants’ time three days a week, and follow up interviews only to clarify aspects of the participants responses post-analysis.
Methodology:
Five students were recruited from the Education Department, as it was felt that such students would be more open to the non-traditional aspects of the methodology. In addition, there is a large cohort of doctoral students in this department, who all start at the same time (October), so it was felt it would be easy to recruit the required number.
Each participant was provided with a study pack - a brightly coloured A5 lined notebook, acting as a diary; a bright red flash drive; a selection of creative materials; and an introduction sheet.
The ‘diary’ contained 30 questions – three each week. Every Monday featured the same question: “How did you discover what you read today?” Every Wednesday there was a task. Half of the tasks were photo assignments such as “Take a photo of the best part of your day” “Take a photo of something surprising”. The other five tasks were based on ethnographic interviewing techniques advocated by proponents of UX in libraries [3], such as “Write a love letter to a library”. On Fridays there was a reflective question, such as “What motivates you to work?” “What do you want to have achieved by Christmas?”.
Each ‘diary’ was handwritten by the researcher, and decorated with images (such as a pumpkin on 31st October) and stickers, and personalised, including a handwritten recipe for the researcher’s favourite pumpkin pie, and a Christmas card from the researcher to the participant.
Findings:
Every participant completed the diary and tasks in full and in detail, and reported that they enjoyed taking part in the study. Participants felt that the process of undertaking the reflective (Friday) questions had helped them with their own research process.
Apart from the somewhat cramp-inducing hand-writing of the diary questions, the methodology was low effort for the researcher, and the results were both exciting and simple to analyse using standard qualitative techniques.
There was a clear evolution in the information-seeking behaviour of participants as they progressed throughout the term. However, there was no disruptive change from attending the Information Skills session. It is hypothesised that this is because both of the content of the session, and also the timing of it (week 2 of the study).
Conclusions:
The cultural probe methodology can be applied to a less-intensive longitudinal study in order to effectively gain insights into the research landscape that new doctoral students occupy. These insights can then be used to design University (not just library) services and interventions to fit into students’ workflow and assist them through the adjustment to working on a doctoral programme.
With one small alteration, namely explicitly requiring that the cultural probe participants attend the personalised information skills consultation provided for all doctoral students during the course of the study rather than assuming they would, the cultural probe methodology is appropriate, applicable and workable for investigating the impact of information skills teaching.
Originality and value:
This research is the first time the cultural probe methodology has been applied both in a lower-intensity longitudinal way, and to try to illuminate a specific research question.
There are a number of documented methods for obtaining evidence for the impact of information skills teaching on the information seeking behaviour of students. However, these methods are either extremely time-intensive for the researcher (bibliography analysis), only give an isolated snapshot of library-focused behaviour (interviews), or provide results where causal relationships are unable to be drawn (GPA). This methodology has none of these disadvantages, with the possibility of providing a rich, context-situated picture of information-seeking behaviour before and after intervention.
References:
[1] Gaver, B., Dunne, T. and Pacenti, E. (1999) Cultural Probes, Interactions, 6(1), 21-29.
[2] Priestner, A. and Marshall, D. (2016) Snapshot: A Cultural Probe Study Exploring the Research and Information Behaviour of Postdocs and PhD Students at the University of Cambridge. Retrieved from https://futurelib.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/the-snapshot-project.pdf.
[3] Priestner, A. and Borg, M. (2016) User Experience in Libraries: Applying Ethnography and Human-Centred Design. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.
Learning , Relationships , Innovative Methods
