Article Note: On library workshop attendance

The library here offers a series of optional workshops as a part of our Information Literacy Assessment Program. In a nutshell, incoming freshmen take an information literacy skills assessment. If they successfully pass it, they are deemed proficient. If they do not, in order to bring their skills up to speed they have the option to attend a series of workshops at the library with one of the instruction librarians. To close the loop, the first years students are reassessed via survey at end of their first year. We've been doing this for a few years now. The pandemic did have an impact on the process, but even before then attendance was an issue. So when I saw this article I wanted to see if the authors had anything new to offer that we could learn and more importantly not say anything that we already knew and/or tried out. For this post, I am going to summarize and highlight parts of the article and then comment, in part to see where things may apply to us or not. A challenge for me writing about this is that, well, to be honest, there may be details I cannot (or should not) disclose for reasons ranging from I should not dig into specifics to not attracting undesired attention. Still, writing about this for me serves as a bit of a reflective exercise as the instruction team here will likely be evaluating the program this summer for sustainability and future planning.

The article is based on a survey of 161 workshop providers that provide academic support workshops (as I understand it, can include library workshops) in Canada and the United States. They are attempting to answer the questions on attendance by looking at workshops themselves given that, as they point out, students often do not behave according to their stated preferences, and if librarians had the answer, they would not be struggling with the issue (115). They examined 10 variables: 

• Topic
• Month
• Time
• Duration
• Advertising
• Location
• Target audience
• Series status
• Buy-in
• Incentives

A big challenge: 

 

"In some cases, attendance rates may decline after a period of relative success. In other cases, attendance is a challenge from the first time a workshop is offered" (113). 

 

In our case, we had both challenges. We had some initial success in the first three years, and then the decline in attendance just took a dive and has kept going down. We went with making the workshops optional, and over time that has been a challenge as students mostly ignore the process, and there is low faculty buy-in (despite the fact they give plenty of lip service to the importance of information literacy and their students developing good research skills, but I digress at the moment). 

By now, one would think this is common knowledge, but it is not, and it is something we often have to keep reinforcing to try to get faculty buy-in: 

"Regardless of selection biases, mandatory vs. optional workshops, and the specifics of outcome type, it is clear from the literature that exposure to information literacy instruction is strongly correlated with improved student outcomes" (114). 

I should add at this point that a big reason we implemented the workshops program is faculty in the first year classes were not too keen on bringing their classes in for library instruction. At the college here at the time, it was an "expectation" those first year classes would bring their classes in for a library instruction session to the library; note that "expectation" did not mean requirement, and many faculty chose to just not do it. This is the very common situation of "we do not want to give up class time for [something that may be important] because it is our class time." So doing outside of class workshops, in addition to giving students a degree of choice, was for their convenience, they did not have to give up their time. 

So, what ended up happening is that making it optional meant students, instead of taking some initiative to improve their skills, which is what we had hoped, just chose to take that initiative to ignore the process instead. This was similar to what the authors of the article point out: 

"The unfortunate fact of the matter is that students simply do not show up to optional workshops in any significant numbers. Even when the pressure is on, and students are tested on a skill by their course instructors and know they need to develop it, attendance rates even at targeted sessions remain low" (114). 

Among the variables they list, time is one we can measure to an extent. Through the Springshare platform we use, we can see which workshop times are best attended; this is the same for research consult appointments by the way. However, even planning for that has not really helped the attendance issue. 

The authors defined "workshop success" as a workshop that had 5 or more attendees (116). This would be in line for us since our workshops are capped at 5 students. The reason we did that was to allow the librarians to have close contact with the students as well as make the workshops more interactive. Unfortunately, even getting those 5 has proven a significant challenge for us. As for duration, our workshops would run 20 to 25 minutes give or take, including a short quiz/assessment at end of the session. 

Prior to the pandemic, workshops were done in the library. When the pandemic hit, we moved them to an online asynchronous modules program, but that would be another story to consider later. Anecdotally, attendance was not any better when they had an online option. 

 

What the authors found: 

 

"Of the factors evaluated in this study, only four were found to significantly impact workshop success: topic, session location, advertising type, and target audience. Topics that were highly targeted like course/assignment-specific workshops, and 'other' topics (which included such topics as paleography, GIS software, civil discourse and misinformation, research poster design, and academic technologies) were more likely to be successful than broader topics that might have benefited a larger number of students" (120). 

Our workshops would fall under course and assignment-specific as they are tied in to first year classes in general studies. We even mapped their learning outcomes to our information literacy outcomes. 

Another finding: 

"Sessions hosted in faculty/department buildings were preferred over those hosted in the library" (120). 

To be honest, I am not sure hosting workshops in department buildings would have made much a difference here. Given also that we hosted workshops outside of regular hours (again, to make them accessible), that would have meant being unable to use department buildings that are locked after hours (and that was before the pandemic. During the height of COVID, campus was under full lockdown with restricted ID access). 

Finding: 

"Specially targeted advertising that was delivered directly to the student and did not rely on student noticing it somewhere (be it digital or print) also correlated with workshop success, as was the targeting of a specific audience" (120). 

We did that. For advertising, a letter via e-mail came via one of the dean's to the students, so it came from an administrator. What we found over time is students just tune out almost anything coming out of the administration's offices. Only things they tend to pay attention via e-mail is anything related to financial aid, their accounts, class registrations, and emergency alerts; this according to students we've talked to. In addition though, we would visit their classrooms and deliver the information to them in person. That still did not get their attention. We were as targeted as we could be. 

Overall, the article did not tell me anything new or different from our experience. Their four key things at the end of the article were things that we already were doing. Keep in mind much of this was applicable prior to the pandemic. We did our best to adapt to it with online options, but the pandemic still made things more difficult. In the end, at least we got to see that we are not the only ones struggling with these issues.

Citation for the article: 

Witherspoon, Richelle L. and Philip O.L. Taber, "Increasing Student Attendance at Library Workshops: What the Data Tells Us." College and Research Libraries (January 2021): 113-128.