More than words: Using visual research methods to explore student experience

Description

Academic Librarians want to help our learners. To understand what they need, we must talk to them (Tewell, 2019). This workshop will share my experience as a practitioner researcher funded by the AHRC-RLUK Professional Practice Fellowship Scheme for research and academic libraries. I used photovoice to explore the transition of international students to the MSc Public Health at the University of Northampton. Photovoice encourages individuals to share their experiences through their images and their discussion – an inclusive and accessible method (Wang, 2003; Hicks and Lloyd, 2018). Most students on the MSc Public Health are international. I wanted to understand their experiences and what I can do to help them develop their information literacy practice (Hicks and Lloyd, 2018; Tewell, 2019).

This 60-minute workshop will give attendees the chance to explore a visual research method. The workshop will encourage discussion around the benefits and challenges of photovoice (Luo, 2017; Milne and Muir, 2019) and the project findings. We can’t assume we know what students want – we need to ask them. Becoming research active allows us to directly engage with our library community and find out what we can do better (or what we are already doing well!).

Period	21 May 2025
Event title	Discover Academic Research Training and Support: ‘Opening Doors: Empowering Librarians to conduct and support research‘.
Event type	Conference
Location	Wiltshire, United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	National