Executive Summary

The full ‘Student as Researcher’ programme covers the journey from initial information finding, via academic skills to more in-depth research skills, and will focus specifically on the development of information fluency.

It will support the University strategy to ‘sustain a Warwick student experience of distinction’ by offering ‘all students the opportunity to work on an extended project or piece of research’.

The programme will build upon existing pockets of good practice to provide a coherent and joined-up student journey and – ultimately – a more consistent student experience. The programme will enable students to develop their research skills and information literacy across the whole of the undergraduate course. The programme will be based on experiential learning and – where possible – allow the student to enjoy fully the benefits the Library can offer in terms of resources, learning spaces and support.

A key element of the programme will be the opportunity for the ‘student as researcher’ to discover and use primary sources and special collections unique to Warwick, and then for the ‘student as producer’ to enter the wider academic world of their subject by publishing in a departmental journal or repository, or alternatively presenting at a student conference.

The full programme will cover:

• Welcome to the Library and ‘student as researcher’ programme • Introduction to the University Library • ‘Finding information for yourself’ • Preparing for effective information sharing (physical and virtual) • Developing ‘academic skills’ (including referencing and avoiding plagiarism) • Preparing for research and developing your topic • Researching the literature, using primary sources (MRC or external collections) • Data collection and management • Preparation for producing outputs: poster presentations, conference papers or student publications, via Warwick student journals, UNWRAP or external publications (including practical issues of writing for publication, raising your profile and managing a journal) • Using your researcher skills

It is intended that the programme will enable undergraduates to engage in research first hand and develop skills which they can build upon either in postgraduate study or in the workplace.

In the first instance it is proposed that this will be run as shorter phased pilot projects (with different disciplines piloting different elements) to achieve the planning outcomes listed in the next section. In this form we expect the pilot will reach over 220 students for WBS and smaller cohorts for the other partners (listed above). In the long-term it is intended that this programme be adopted across the University by all undergraduate courses, spanning the full duration of the undergraduate programme.