Against First-Year Research Papers: A Librarian Perspective on Nurturing Intellectual Curiosity

Abstract

Last year, Thompson Rivers University librarians partnered with English department
faculty to teach a multiweek information literacy tutorial to first-year academic writing
classes. The main goal of the program was to advance student research skills to complete
major course assignments and was, by most metrics, quite successful.
As the program came to an end, I found myself in the position of providing feedback on
more than sixty search strategy and citation mini-assignments. I had thought these assignments
would be simple things—that the comments would be straightforward