Transferring Skills, Transferring Students: A Call To Academic Libraries

Abstract

The growing number of transfer students on college and university campuses presents a challenge to academic libraries. For years, these libraries have taught students information literacy skills to enhance their abilities to locate, evaluate, and use information in order to be successful students as well as lifelong learners. At many libraries, both direct from high school and transfer students are taught these skills together, without the recognition that either of them has special or diverse needs. Several studies over the years have concluded that the information needs of transfer students differed from those of their native counterparts and stress the importance for separate instruction. A recent survey of some Ohio academic libraries by the authors revealed that the vast majority of these libraries do not provide separate instruction for transfer students. This article, therefore, calls for a dialogue among librarians to continue to discuss this topic and consider developing instructional programs to meet the needs of transfer students.

Creating a Library Orientation Card Game to Reach New Transfer Students

“…Despite missing a variety of orientation and instruction offerings, including education about libraries and information literacy, transfer students are often expected to have the same knowledge and skills as non-transfer students. Aware of these common challenges that transfer students often face in transitioning to a new institution, some librarians have called for academic libraries to provide more orientation and instruction sessions designed with the transfer student population and their needs in mind (Phillips & Atwood, 2010;Tag, 2004). In recent years, librarians have designed an information literacy game in Blackboard (Kearns, Kirsch, & Cononie, 2017), personal librarian programs (MacDonald & Mohanty, 2017;Lafrance & Kealey, 2017), and other library services and programs (McBride, Gregor, & McCallister, 2017) specifically for transfer students.…”

Transforming for our transfers: the creation of a transfer student services librarian

“…While there is a plethora of research and practical guidance within the higher education literature about transfer students, and organizations such as the National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students (2017), the University of South Carolina's (2016) National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition and the Association of American Colleges and Universities (2017) have long provided resources to help academics ensure the success of transfer students, the research and literature specifically related to academic libraries and transfer students is scarce (Phillips and Atwood, 2010). However, the necessity for academic libraries to both identify the specific needs of transfer students and to address those needs is clear (Phillips and Atwood, 2010). Shapiro, Dundar, Wakhungu, Yuan and Harrell, in their National Student Clearninghouse Research report (2015), noted that in Fall 2014, based on 3,934 institutions, the number of students who were enrolled in institutions of higher education as "transfer-in students" was 1,472,460.…”

Connecting information literacy instruction with transfer student success

“…The authors note the problem of scalability with this type of instructor-librarian collaboration but contend that under-prepared transfer students are a population worthy of such intensive focus, noting "[t]he one-size-fits-all school of education has already failed some of these students more than once" (p. 401). Phillips and Atwood (2010) investigated the issue at a systemic level, surveying academic libraries throughout Ohio about their instructional support for transfer students. The vast majority of respondents did not offer separate information literacy instruction for transfer students and had no plans to develop any such classes (p. 339).…”

“…A 2014 report by the National Center for Education Statistics found that 35 percent of first-time undergraduate students sampled had transferred between institutions, or had co-enrolled at multiple institutions, at some point during their undergraduate careers (Simone, 2014, p. 21). Academic librarians involved in outreach and instruction on their campuses recognize the importance of serving transfer students (Phillips & Atwood, 2010) but find scant guidance from the library science literature about how they ought to proceed. This article aims to build on previous transfer student research in order to explore the potential roles for academic libraries in supporting the transfer process.…”