LIBRARIAN
(Australian):
Professor Guildford. I haven’t seen you for quite some time.
PROFESSOR
(Australian):
Hi Kathy. It’s been a while, yes. You know how busy these semesters get.
LIBRARIAN: I can only imagine. Are you here to do
some research?
PROFESSOR: Not today. Actually, I need your help.
LIBRARIAN: Of course.
PROFESSOR: One of my classes has been working on
a big project. Um, they’ve been surveying students around campus about their
satisfaction with the quality of teaching here at our university.
LIBRARIAN: Oh, interesting. Are they focusing on
any particular department?
PROFESSOR: Each of the 10 groups is responsible
for a different school. You know, the business school, science and engineering,
humanities…
LIBRARIAN: Wow.
PROFESSOR: When we put them all together in the
end, we’ll have a pretty thorough understanding of how students rate our
teachers. Uh, so, I think this data will be really useful for others.
LIBRARIAN: Absolutely. What an interesting
project!
PROFESSOR: That’s why I want to digitally archive
the project and
have it here at the library for future scholars and students to use in their
research.
LIBRARIAN: OK. That’s possible. Have you received
permission from your department chair for this yet?
PROFESSOR: Yep. Stamped and approved. I’ve even
received a bit of funding to work on this. Around $3000. I know your services
are free, but if we need to finance any of the work to build the digital
archives, I have some of the funds set aside for that.
LIBRARIAN: I don’t think we’ll need any money,
but thank you for the offer. So, first things first. We need to design your archive.
Then we can discuss the data
entry process.
PROFESSOR: Great.
LIBRARIAN: We have archivists here who can work
with the tech staff to build the structure of your archive, but first I need to
know what kind of data we’re working with.
PROFESSOR: All right.
LIBRARIAN: You said the students are doing
surveys, right?
PROFESSOR: Yes. They are going into different
buildings on campus and asking random students to fill out paper surveys.
LIBRARIAN: Short answers, I’m assuming?
PROFESSOR: Well, yes, in part. First, the respondents provide their name,
their major, and their year in university. Next, there are three questions that require
students to rate their satisfaction with certain aspects of their education on
a scale of 1 to 10.
LIBRARIAN: What aspects, exactly?
PROFESSOR: Teachers. That’s first. Then class
content. And finally with learning outcomes. So, this means whether the
students feel they are getting out of their classes what they’re supposed to.
LIBRARIAN: OK.
PROFESSOR: And…uh…there’s a final section with
three more questions that require written answers of…oh…one to two sentences. They
basically give students a chance to tell us what particular classes they like
or dislike, and what teachers they like most and why.
LIBRARIAN: Hmm. How are the students compiling
the data from those questions?
PROFESSOR: The short answer ones?
LIBRARIAN: Yeah.
PROFESSOR: We are, as a class, going to come up
with a coding system after the surveys are all collected and put the responses
into different categories.
LIBRARIAN: So you’ll put out themes.
PROFESSOR: Exactly.
LIBRARIAN: OK. Then you are going to have all of
this data compiled into spreadsheets?
PROFESSOR: Right. We’ll have a narrative summary
of the results as well.
LIBRARIAN: Let
me talk with our archival team and see what we can do. I don’t think it will be
too difficult. Do you have a timeline you are working on?
PROFESSOR: The project will be completed in two
weeks. So I can get the data to you then. But would it be possible for the
students to be involved in the archival part of it? What a fantastic learning
experience that would be.
LIBRARIAN: Sure, why not? How about I talk with
our team and give you a call later this week.
PROFESSOR: Wonderful. Thank you Kathy.