This document summarizes the results of a study on communicating with research students. Through focus groups and questionnaires, the study identified several crisis points for postgraduate researchers: 1) "Finding your feet" as new students struggle to navigate university resources, 2) "You're on your own" as support ends after registration, and 3) "The great unknown" as students begin writing up their research. The study also found that postgraduate researchers desire a stronger sense of identity as researchers and community. Based on these results, the document recommends that universities acknowledge postgraduate researchers as researchers, increase opportunities for community, improve communication of library services' relevance, and provide a clear and consistent message to researchers.

1. COMMUNICATING WITH
RESEARCH STUDENTS

2. Introduction
• Why we began the project:
– Requested training had poor uptake
– Wanted to know reasons for this
– Could it be format?
– Could it be timing?
– Could it be something else entirely?

3. Method
• Literature review
• Action research project
• Focus groups:
– ‘The first time I heard about the library’
– Timeline & discussion
– Card sorting exercise
• Supplemental questionnaire
• Phenomenological approach to analysis

4. Results
• Timeline and timeliness
• Postgraduate researcher needs
• Areas for improvement in LLS

5. Timeline and Timeliness
“Information is only useful at
exactly the time we need it.”
(Pettersson, 2002)

6. Crisis Point 1: ‘Finding your feet’

7. Finding your feet
• “My first day, the supervisor said, ‘make the library
your second home if you want to make progress.”
• “The library is a bit confusing.”
• “You need reminding [about the library].”

8. Crisis Point 2: ‘You’re on your own.’

9. You’re on your own
• “After registration if one is not careful you can
become disappointed … no one is there to show you
what to do next.”
• “Immediately after registration, your work becomes
more individual [you’re] involved in group activities up
to this point.”

10. Crisis Point 3: ‘The great unknown’

11. The great unknown
• “Here be the dragons stage … long arrows
and areas marked ‘WRITING UP’.”

12. Postgraduate researcher needs:
researcher identity
• “Sometimes when you meet other researchers from
other universities you are envious; where they sit in
their office ... [they] feel part of the university
research culture.”
• “You are a researcher at this university representing
this university but you don’t get the means to do that,
you are treated as an undergraduate.”

13. Postgraduate researcher needs:
a sense of community
• The training “makes [students] feel part of the culture.”
• “[The] compulsory courses and the induction … was the first
time I felt there was other PhD students. Until this I found
university a little hostile towards me, in a sense.”
• “[You] meet students from other faculties which is good but you
never see them again. Then the relationship you have built
cannot continue you still feel quite disconnected you don’t have
a place where you can bump into other PhD students.”

14. Areas for improvement in LLS:
perceived relevance
• “I came in and I was like... to be
honest... I’ve got to sit through this for
three hours? But it was useful”
• Expectations vs. actual experience
• Limited understanding about the value
of some services

15. Areas for improvement in LLS:
clarity & consistency
• Holistic impression across different
dimensions of the service including:
– Physical space
– Resources
– Subject Librarians
– Learning developers
– Etc.

16. Recommendations
• Acknowledge PGRs as researchers
• Find opportunities to increase the sense of
community
• Inform PGRs of the relevance of LLS (in
collaboration w. other communicators)
• Give a clear & consistent message
• Improve timeliness

17. Progress So Far
• Formation of Research Support Service
Improvement Group
• New enrollers email from Graduate
School with overview of LLS provision
• Improved awareness of terminology
• Changes to literature searching training

18. Activity
• Add your own provision to the timeline
• Points for reflection:
– Can you identify any other milestones?
– Are you familiar with…
• the crisis points we identified?
• any different crisis points?