If the Engineering Literature Fits, Use It! Student Application of Grey Literature and Engineering Standards

Abstract

The ACRL information literacy standards include the need for students to use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose. To use information for a specific purpose students should have an ability to differentiate the types of information available, assess the relevance and credibility of the source to their application, and then apply the information within the context of their writing. Engineering students are usually aware of monographs and periodicals from introductory library instruction but are unfamiliar with grey literature and engineering standards. To address this need, collaboration between library and engineering instruction for a senior level capstone mechanical engineering design course was created. The course consisted of 3 independent sections of approximately 18 students each that were randomly paired and assigned projects from the same pool of 10 system-level experiments. The students were tasked with developing a full analysis and report of the system-level performance of their respective experiment. Library instruction occurred during the second lecture of class and consisted of a fifty minute overview presentation followed by two hours of work time. All sections were presented information types as five different categories: monographs, scholarly articles, grey literature, standards, and multimedia. One section of the class was randomly selected and presented information types placed into contextual uses within example sections of a report and assigned a worksheet requiring them to find sources specific to their project and list them within the report section they planned to implement the literature. The efficacy of this pedagogical change to contextualize examples followed by immediate application was assessed by measuring the frequency and type of citations used by all 3 sections of the class. Citation analysis found a statistically insignificant 7% increase in total number of citations used by the test section students. Although the utilization of engineering standards did not increase, the use of grey literature in the test section increase 83% compared with the two control sections taught by the same engineering faculty. Furthermore the test section decreased their use of multimedia information. Two subsequent sections of the course taught by other engineering faculty are also compared. This provides a preliminary indication that contextualizing library instruction by information type increases the diversity of literature utilized by engineering students. The overall credibility of citations utilized by students in their reports is likely to increase if this diversity increases the use of grey literature and standards.

Mapping industry standards and integration opportunities in business management curricula

“…Academic librarians in business and engineering disciplines can help with these efforts, as their information literacy instruction routinely teaches students about discovering, evaluating, and using various resource types for their work, as well as how resources are developed. Several studies have discussed academic librarians teaching about standards in engineering (Hanlan, Ziino, & Hoffman, 2014;Leachman & Leachman, 2015) and engineering technology (Phillips & McPherson, 2016) curricula. Many academic libraries maintain standards collections and/or offer services for purchasing needed standards for students and faculty (Phillips, 2019).…”

Incorporating Engineering Standards Throughout the Biomedical Engineering Curriculum

“…A variety of instructional techniques have been implemented to introduce engineering students to standards, such as workshops [8] and stand-alone courses [6]; however, many biomedical engineering undergraduate curricula do not have space for an additional stand-alone course on standards. Other strategies include incorporating standards into already existing courses, such as capstone [9,10], medical devices [11], and experimental design [12,13], and using the support of engineering librarians [13]. Unfortunately, these courses are often taken in the senior year or in graduate programs [9][10][11]13], and limited data exist to assess the efficacy of these instructional strategies.…”

“…Other strategies include incorporating standards into already existing courses, such as capstone [9,10], medical devices [11], and experimental design [12,13], and using the support of engineering librarians [13]. Unfortunately, these courses are often taken in the senior year or in graduate programs [9][10][11]13], and limited data exist to assess the efficacy of these instructional strategies. Despite a recommendation made by a panel at the 2012 Capstone Design Conference that faculty should introduce engineering standards earlier and throughout the curriculum [10], no prior literature expands upon and directly assesses the instructional methods used to incorporate engineering standards beyond a single course.…”

Using a Faceted Taxonomy to Investigate Student Selection of Information Sources in an Engineering Lab Course

“…Engineering librarians are concerned with the quality of sources students use in their assignments [1]- [4]. However, the changing nature of the information landscape and the expansion of information sources available to undergraduate students has made it more difficult to use onesize-fits-all recommendations or conclusions.…”